This article focuses on the accuracy of satellite data, which may then be used in wave power applications. The satellite data are compared to data from wave buoys, which are currently considered to be the most accurate of the devices available for measuring wave characteristics. This article presents an analysis of satellite- (Topex/poseidon) and buoy-measured significant wave heights for a 1-year period at Cape Sorell and Rottnest Island, off the Australian coast. The analysis found that the satellite-measured wave heights showed (...) a slight positive bias. This is contrary to the findings of most other authors, who have analyzed data from the Northern Hemisphere and generally found a negative bias in the satellite-measured wave heights. The implication is that calibration functions to improve the correlation between the buoy and satellite data may vary for different hemispheres or even regions within these. (shrink)

A lively topic of debate in decision theory over recent years concerns our understanding of the different risk attitudes exhibited by decision makers. There is ample evidence that risk-averse and risk-seeking behaviours are widespread, and a growing consensus that such behaviour is rationally permissible. In the context of clinical medicine, this matter is complicated by the fact that healthcare professionals must often make choices for the benefit of their patients, but the norms of rational choice are conventionally grounded in a (...) decision maker’s own desires, beliefs and actions. The presence of both doctor and patient raises the question of whose risk attitude matters for the choice at hand and what to do when these diverge. Must doctors make risky choices when treating risk-seeking patients? Ought they to be risk averse in general when choosing on behalf of others? In this paper, I will argue that healthcare professionals ought to adopt a deferential approach, whereby it is the risk attitude of the patient that matters in medical decision making. I will show how familiar arguments for widely held anti-paternalistic views about medicine can be straightforwardly extended to include not only patients’ evaluations of possible health states, but also their attitudes to risk. However, I will also show that this deferential view needs further refinement: patients’ higher-order attitudes towards their risk attitudes must be considered in order to avoid some counterexamples and to accommodate different views about what sort of attitudes risk attitudes actually are. (shrink)

I argue that the epistemology underlying Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic methodology is quasi-fideist. According to this view, the rationality of religious belief is dependent on absolutely certain ungrounded grounds, called hinges. I further argue that the quasi-fideist epistemology of presuppositional apologetics explains why Van Til’s method is neither fideist nor problematically circular: hinges are rational in the sense that they are partly constitutive of rationality, and all beliefs (not just religious ones) depend on hinges. In addition, it illuminates something (...) of why it may strike one as a misguided or uncompelling apologetic method: instead of starting by tackling the comparatively minor epistemic commitments of the nonbeliever, it directly approaches their deepest and surest commitments. (shrink)

Lakatos held that science proceeds by means of competing research programme, each with its own “hard core” or paradigm. He intended this view to reconcile the competing views of Kuhn and Popper. But what Lakatos overlooked is that science needs to be construed to be one gigantic research programme with, as its “hard core”, a metaphysical thesis that asserts that the universe is such that there is an inherent unity in the laws that govern the way physical phenomena occur. The (...) conception of science that emerges from this insight succeeds in doing what Lakatos’s own view fails to do; it has fruitful implications for science itself, and solves the problem of induction. (shrink)

A response to pressures on pension finance caused by population ageing and economic turbulence has been a substantial move from traditional defined-benefit plans in which, at least in principle, all risk falls on the contributions side, to defined-contribution plans in which risk during accumulation all falls on the benefits side. This paper argues that both designs are ‘corner solutions’ and hence generally suboptimal, and goes on to set out a range of designs that offer different ways of sharing risk among (...) workers, employers, future pensioners and current pensioners. (shrink)

This volume is about abstract objects and the ways we refer to them in natural language. Asher develops a semantical and metaphysical analysis of these entities in two stages. The first reflects the rich ontology of abstract objects necessitated by the forms of language in which we think and speak. A second level of analysis maps the ontology of natural language metaphysics onto a sparser domain--a more systematic realm of abstract objects that are fully analyzed. This second level reflects the (...) commitments of real metaphysics. The models for these commitments assign truth conditions to natural language discourse. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that a previously understudied lexical item with the polysemous form so (‘so’) in German can be classified as an adverbial expletive. While so has been extensively analyzed in functions such as modal adverb and discourse marker, this study focuses on its occurrence as a prefield element introducing elaboration or exemplification in formal written registers. Based on corpus data from journalistic and academic prose, I suggest that “this” so (labeled “so ex” here) is inserted in Spec,FinP (...) as one of the functional means that satisfy the computational requirements in order for the prefield not to be unfilled (syntactic function); additionally, it performs a grammatic-semantic function in that, similarly to other expletive elements, it anchors the introduced proposition to the preceding discourse while preserving syntactic well-formedness. This proposal positions this element within the broader typology of expletive constructions in Germanic languages, with the aim of advancing our understanding of its role in sentence structure and discourse coherence. (shrink)

I hope I have convinced the reader that DR theory offers at least some exciting potential when applied to the semantics of belief reports. It differs considerably from other approaches, and it makes intuitively acceptable predictions that other theories do not. The theory also provides a novel approach to the semantics of other propsitional attitude reports. Further, DR theory enables one to approach the topic of anaphora within belief and other propositional attitude contexts in a novel way, thus combining the (...) semantics developed here with one of the theory's original motivations (Kamp, 1981a). However, these are unfortunately topics that I must reserve for another time. (shrink)

1. Introduction 2. Reward-Guided Decision Making 3. Content in the Model 4. How to Deflate a Metarepresentational Reading Proust and Carruthers on metacognitive feelings 5. A Deflationary Treatment of RPEs? 5.1 Dispensing with prediction errors 5.2 What is use of the RPE focused on? 5.3 Alternative explanations—worldly correlates 5.4 Contrast cases 6. Conclusion Appendix: Temporal Difference Learning Algorithms.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

1. People standardly communicate by uttering phrases or sentences with certain intonation patterns, accompanied by facial expressions, eye contact and often a variety of gestures. If all goes well...

In a recent paper in this journal, Richard Arneson criticizes the domination account of exploitation and attributes it to me and Allen Wood. In this paper, I defend the domination account against Arneson's criticisms. I begin by showing that the domination view is distinct from the vulnerability-based view defended by Wood. I also show that Alan Wertheimer's influential account of exploitation is congenial to the domination view. I then argue that Arneson's own fairness-based view of exploitation generates false negatives and (...) trivializes the concept of exploitation, rendering it entirely parasitic on the notion of unfairness. (shrink)

In this superb introduction, Nicholas Dent covers the whole of Rousseau's thought. Beginning with a helpful overview of Rousseau's life and works, he introduces and assesses Rousseau's central ideas and arguments. These include the corruption of modern civilization, the state of nature, his famous theories of _amour de soi _and _amour propre_, education, and his famous work _Emile_. He gives particular attention to Rousseau's theories of democracy and freedom found in his most celebrated work, _The Social Contract_, and explains (...) what Rousseau meant by the 'general will'. (shrink)

Commentary on Bergstrom and Rosvall, ‘The transmission sense of information’, Biology and Philosophy. In response to worries that uses of the concept of information in biology are metaphorical or insubstantial, Bergstrom and Rosvall have identified a sense in which DNA transmits information down the generations. Their ‘transmission view of information’ is founded on a claim about DNA’s teleofunction. Bergstrom and Rosvall see their transmission view of information as a rival to semantic accounts. This commentary argues that it is complementary. The (...) idea that DNA is transmitting information down the generations only makes sense if it is carrying a message, that is to say if it has semantic content. (shrink)

Can findings from psychology and cognitive neuroscience about the neural mechanisms involved in decision-making can tell us anything useful about the commonly-understood mental phenomenon of making voluntary choices? Two philosophical objections are considered. First, that the neural data is subpersonal, and so cannot enter into illuminating explanations of personal level phenomena like voluntary action. Secondly, that mental properties are multiply realized in the brain in such a way as to make them insusceptible to neuroscientific study. The paper argues that both (...) objections would be weakened by the discovery of empirical generalisations connecting subpersonal properties with the personal level. It gives three case studies that furnish evidence to that effect. It argues that the existence of such interrelations are consistent with a plausible construal of the personal-subpersonal distinction. Furthermore, there is no reason to suppose that the notion subpersonal representation relied on in cognitive neuroscience illicitly imports personal-level phenomena like consciousness or normativity, or is otherwise explanatorily problematic. (shrink)

This paper argues that Cohen’s early work on Marxism, and his work in political philosophy, entails commitment to a distributive paradigm, that is, the view that exploitation obtains only if distributive injustice obtains. Cohen’s early espousal of that paradigm is explicitly reaffirmed in his defence of luck egalitarianism. The paper argues that Cohen’s distributive paradigm is neither the only defensible theory of exploitation, nor indeed the most plausible. It also shows that Cohen himself had doubts about the distributive paradigm, and (...) in fact came to reject it towards the end of his life. (shrink)

In the target article, Christie, Brusse, et al. argue that selected effect functions do not, in general, explain why a trait exists in a population and, therefore, theories of representational content should not rely on selected effect functions. This response focuses on the claim about functions-for-representation. The role of evolutionary functions in a theory of content is to pick out outcomes that have been systematically stabilized by natural selection. Correctness conditions are conditions involved in explaining how that happened. Selected effect (...) functions can play that role in the complex equilibria that Christie, Brusse, et al. identify. Non-equilibrium cases are also discussed. (shrink)

What is the evolutionary significance of the various mechanisms of imitation, emulation and social learning found in humans and other animals? This paper presents an advance in the theoretical resources for addressing that question, in the light of which standard approaches from the cultural evolution literature should be refocused. The central question is whether humans have an imitationbased inheritance system—a mechanism that has the evolutionary function of transmitting behavioural phenotypes reliably down the generations. To have the evolutionary power of an (...) inheritance system, an imitiation-based mechanism must meet a range of demanding requirements. The paper goes on to review the evidence for and against the hypothesis that there is indeed an imitation-based inheritance system in humans. (shrink)

Leibniz est-il devenu phénoménaliste pendant ses années dernières ? Contre Furth et Loeb, ce travail rend une réponse négative à cette question. Quoique Leibniz a caressé les idées phénoménalistes, il ne les a jamais vraiment acceptées ; au contraire, il soutient une autre thèse réductioniste, c'est-à-dire que les corps sont des agrégats des monades. Cependant, cette conclusion entraîne ses propres difficultés, car à certains égards, la doctrine phénoménaliste paraît plus satisfaisante que l'option concurrante. On soutient que la répugnance leibnizienne à (...) accepter le phénoménalisme doit s'expliquer par son dessein de concilier la monadologie et la physique. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Judgement analyses our experience of the beautiful and the sublime in relation to nature, morality, and theology. Meredith's classic translation is here lightly revised and supplemented with a bilingual glossary. The edition also includes the important First Introduction.

Reasoning with conditionals is often thought to be non-monotonic, but there is no incompatibility with classical logic, and no need to formalise inference itself as probabilistic. When the addition of a new premise leads to abandonment of a previously compelling conclusion reached by modus ponens, for example, this is generally because it is hard to think of a model in which the conditional and the new premise are true.

The belief that science shows an accumulation of a body of objective knowledge has been widely challenged by philosophers and historians in the latter half of this century. In this treatise, Dr. Jardine defends this belief with a careful appreciation of the complexities involved, drawing on many controversial issues concerning truth in science, interpretation of past theories, and grounds of scientific method.

Tonti-Fillipini, Nicholas We all have friends or family who are gay or lesbians. These are people we know and love and are a part of our families. The Rudd government's removal of laws that discriminated against them was most significant in ending inequality in the law. Now though we face something very different: the redefinition of marriage to exclude the words "a man and a woman" from what marriage means.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) show that the received view of the problem of quantificational subordination (QS) is incorrect, and that, consequently, existing solutions do not succeed in explaining the facts, and (b) provide a new account of QS. On the received view of QS within dynamic semantic frameworks, determiners treated as universal quantifiers (henceforth universal determiners) such as all, every, and each behave as barriers to inter-sentential anaphora yet allow anaphoric accessibility in a number of situations. (...) We argue that universal determiners are not intrinsic anaphora barriers and that anaphoric accessibility under them is enabled factors including lexicon information and discourse effects of universal determiners. In support of this viewpoint, we first provide a data survey on the phenomena of QS and its interactions with plurals, rhetorical relations, and adverbial quantification. The results of the survey show that judgments of (naive) native English speakers on the QS examples are quite different from what is claimed in the literature. We argue that the various solutions in the literature, which in general accept that universal determiners are intrinsic anaphora barriers, fail to account for the facts from the survey data. We then describe the approach we adopt, which denies that universal determiners are anaphora barriers and reconstructs their semantics so that information in their scope can be released for anaphora. The constraints on QS noted in the literature we model in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) as conditions on the discourse relations which can hold between subordinated constituents. We show that this approach accounts for the QS data. (shrink)

The Gorgias ends with Socrates telling an eschatological myth that he insists is a rational account and no mere tale. Using this story, Socrates reasserts the central lessons of the previous discussion. However, it isn’t clear how this story can persuade any of the characters in the dialogue. Those (such as Socrates) who already believe the underlying philosophical lessons don’t appear to require the myth, and those (such as Callicles) who reject these teachings are unlikely to be moved by this (...) far-fetched tale. This raises the question of who the myth is told for and what function it is meant to serve. This chapter argues that the myth is aimed, not at Callicles, but Socrates and those who aspire to follow him. There are uncertainties about the philosophical life that are due to the nature of embodiment, as well as reasons to doubt the connection between happiness and virtue. The myth assists with the former by presenting an image that draws a philosopher away from the goods of the body toward the goods of the soul. The story assists with the latter by presenting an image of cosmic justice, thereby securing happiness in proportion to virtue. (shrink)

This chapter outlines a novel solution to the problem of the many, according to which objects can be simultaneously constituted by many collections of particles. To support this proposal, it develops a conception of objects that implies it. On this view, objects are fundamentally subjects of change: the changes an object can survive are explanatorily prior to its constitution. From this perspective, PM arises, and objects are multiply constituted because the changes that objects survive are too coarse-grained to distinguish among (...) the many different collections of particles that are candidates for constituting the relevant object. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reconstruct an important controversy between leibniz and malebranche over innate ideas. It is argued that this controversy is in some ways more illuminating than the better-Known debate between leibniz and locke, For malebranche's objections to innate ideas raise fundamental questions concerning the status of dispositions and the relationship between logic and psychology. The paper shows that in order to meet malebranche's objections, Leibniz adopts a strategy which is doubly reductionist: ideas are reduced to dispositions to think (...) in certain ways, And these dispositions are in turn reduced to unconscious perceptions. It is suggested that malebranche's platonist commitment to the existence of abstract entities forces leibniz to reveal the extent of his nominalism. (shrink)

Study on the logic of normative discourse.

Theoretical reason, modifiers and probability.

This article provides a speech act analysis of ‘crime-enacting’ provisions in criminal statutes, focusing on the illocutionary force of these provisions. These provisions commonly set out not only particular crimes and their characteristics but also their associated penalties. Enactment of a statute brings into force new social facts, typically norms, through the official utterance of linguistic material. These norms are supposed to guide behaviour: they tell us what we must, may, or must not do. Our main claim is that the (...) illocutionary force of such provisions is primarily ‘world-creating’, i.e. effective, or declarational, rather than directive. We assume that directive illocutionary force is either direct or indirect, showing that provisions need not contain the linguistic items that make for direct directives and that according to standard tests no indirect directive is present. A potential counter-argument is that any utterance serving to direct behaviour is necessarily a directive. We show that this behaviour-directing property is shared by some clear non-directives. (shrink)

In 2009, the United States Air Force aired a series of science fiction-themed recruitment commercials on network television and their official YouTube channel. In these advertisements, the superimposition of science fiction imagery over depictions of Air Force operations frames these missions as near-future sci-fi adventure, ironically summarized by the tagline: “It’s not science fiction. It’s what we do every day.” Focusing on an early advertisement for the Air Force’s Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle, this essay explores how themes essential to the (...) science fiction genre play a role in influencing contemporary attitudes about autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic weapons, as well as the way in which the aesthetic and functional qualities of these advanced technologies are used to frame moral arguments about their use. As a reconfiguration of the near-future battleground in the guise of science fiction, the “Reaper” ad reveals the way in which science fiction has come to serve as a functional-aesthetic benchmark and cultural sounding board, against which “every day” technologies can be measured and claims about their value, ethos, and social appeal are made. This essay explores the ethical entanglements between science fiction film and video games, and military technology, and the complex role science fiction plays in influencing public attitudes towards military technologies. (shrink)

The philosophical origins of the principle of subsidiarity must be understood historically. This chapter argues that the critical point for the emergence of the principle lay in Thomas Aquinas’s theological interpretation of Aristotle’s political philosophy and his application of it to the institutional pluralism of medieval Europe. From Aristotle, Aquinas developed the idea that human societies naturally progress from families, through villages to entire city-states, but he recognised that what Aristotle said of city-states could be applied not only to cities (...) but even more emphatically to political communities on the scale of provinces, kingdoms and empires. Moreover, for Aquinas, the civil order was not the only ‘perfect community’ in Aristotle’s sense: there was also the church in all of its many grades and jurisdictions, alongside the many different religious orders and fraternities of medieval Europe, some of them also organised into their own graded hierarchies. Reflecting on the complexity of the society surrounding him, Aquinas acknowledged the many and various purposes for which various associations and forms of human community exist and are formed, giving rise to a whole host of familial, geographical, professional, mercantile, scholarly and other specialised societies. All of these groups and groupings, from the smallest to the largest, have their place and their proper function, according to Aquinas, and each should to be allowed to make its unique and special contribution as a means to integral human fulfillment, without undue interference from any others, including the state. (shrink)

The philosopher Jerry Fodor was a key figure alongside Noam Chomsky in the revolution that led to the renaissance of the cognitive sciences from around 1960. This chapter describes key difference between Chomsky and Fodor. It focuses on Chomsky's and Fodor's conceptions of modularity. The chapter discusses two ways of understanding Chomsky's proposal, in particular how it claims an underlying faculty is related to processing and performance. Chomsky is largely agnostic on this question; the commitments of his programme are to (...) be found elsewhere. The most persuasive evidence for Fodorian modules, as for Chomskyan faculties, comes from dissociations. The chapter also reviews the evidential foundation of all versions of modularity: double dissociation (impairments of one or more mental abilities caused by accidents or other pathology which leave other abilities intact). (shrink)

In this article I review some of the more important developments in philosophy of the past fifty years with the aim of pointing out the contribution that the work of Alvin Plantinga has made to these developments. Along the way I also highlight the most important enduring themes in Plantinga’s work.

This essay makes six claims about the practice of scriptural reasoning. Scriptural reasoning does not try to ground its own possibility. It approaches metaphysics as an account of what is taken to be true, not as a means to demonstrate necessary truths. It relies on luck. It models a practice of learning traditions' languages. It promotes friendship above consensus and agreement. It is a practice of making deep reasonings public. In summary, scriptural reasoning is reparative reasoning which addresses the acute (...) needs of today's society while seeming to refuse certain imperatives that often accompany the academy's approach to those needs. (shrink)