In The Paradox of Predictivism I tried to demonstrate that there is an intimate relationship between predictivism and epistemic pluralism. Here I respond to various published criticisms of some of the key points from Paradox from David Harker, Jarret Leplin, and Clark Glymour. Foci include my account of predictive novelty, the claim that predictivism has two roots, the prediction per se and predictive success, and my account of why Mendeleev’s predictions carried special weight in confirming the Periodic Law of the (...) Elements. (shrink)

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

Lists of paid registrants at Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association from 2006–2008 were compared with lists of people appearing as presenters, commentators or chairs on the meeting programme those same years. These were years in which fee payment depended primarily on an honour system rather than on enforcement. Seventy-four per cent of ethicist participants and 76% of non-ethicist participants appear to have paid their meeting registration fees: not a statistically significant difference. This finding of no difference survives (...) scrutiny for several possible confounds. Thus, professional ethicists seem no less likely to free-ride in this context than do philosophers not specializing in ethics. These data fit with other recent findings suggesting that on average professional ethicists behave no morally better than do professors not specializing in ethics. (shrink)

Many philosophers say that time involves a kind of passage that distinguishes it from space. A traditional objection is that this passage would have to occur at some rate, yet we cannot say what the rate would be. The paper argues that the real problem with time’s passage is different: time would have to pass at one second per second, yet this is not a rate of change. This appears to refute decisively not only the view that time passes, but (...) any tensed theory of time. (shrink)

By a "developed" economy, people roughly mean ones with a high, persistently-growing per-captia income which is not simply based on resource extraction (i.e., oil) or remittances or rentierism — an industrial (or, if there is such a thing, post-industrial) economy which makes most of its participants reasonably and increasingly prosperous. While there are of course differences among them --- the United States is not New Zealand, which is not Belgium, which is not Finland, which is not Japan --- they are (...) all more similar to each other than they are to the vast variety of "undeveloped", "under-developed", or (most optimistically) "developing" economies across the world. (Some people refer to the developed countries as "the North" and the others as "the South"; this drives me up the wall, if only from looking at where China and Australia are on the map.) Economies in the first category tend to stay there; so, sadly, do countries in the second. Development economics is the sub-discipline of economics which attempts to study how economies which have not attained this happy condition can be made to do so, and the factors which hold others back. (shrink)

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash ABSTRACT The coverage of healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own earlier health-adverse behaviors is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following questions: justice for whom? Is it right to take people’s past behaviors into account in determining their access to healthcare? If so, how do we go about taking those behaviors into account? These bioethical questions become even more complex when we consider them in the context of (...) a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. INTRODUCTION Healthcare coverage of lifestyle-related conditions is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following justice-related question: Is it right to consider people’s past behaviors in determining their access to healthcare? If so, the methods of taking those behaviors into account must be fair and justifiable. This bioethical question becomes even more complex when we consider it in the context of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. This paper takes an old, classic debate, evaluates newer approaches, and offers an argument favoring a combined approach which alters the liberal-egalitarian solution to account for social justice. ANALYSIS l. Causes of Disease If healthcare coverage were universal, irrespective of socioeconomic status and lifestyle, people would contribute to the cost of remedying the lifestyle-induced health problems of others. In the West, lifestyle-related diseases are burdensome.[1] This paper approaches this concern from a western lens that incorporates both a European tradition of “social safety nets” and an American tradition of personal freedoms. By taking such an approach, solutions to the consequences of one’s past behavior burdening others must consider an individual’s personal freedom to choose to act as he or she wishes, with the distributive social and economic equality of the many. The concept of disease caused by lifestyle and diet is proven. Many health conditions include behavioral risk factors. Multi-pack smoking increases the risk of chronic lung disease, while obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Inattention to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a lack of exercise leads to increased risks of coronary artery disease.[2] While poor lifestyle choices certainly influence these conditions, their causes are multifactorial, and it is difficult to say that any single string of poor choices led to their development. In a scenario where two men excessively eat fast food for 20 years, several discrete factors impact whether any of them might suffer an ischemic-embolic stroke or not. Genetics, circumstances, and activity will also contribute to outcomes. ll. Alcohol-Related End-Stage Liver Disease One paper suggests that alcohol-related end-stage liver disease (ARESLD) differs from other multifactorial disorders as alcohol alone causes the disease.[3] It justifies attributing personal responsibility to patients with ARESLD because the condition develops only after the cumulative effects of large quantities of alcohol consumed from years to decades.[4] However, the paper undermines its position by admitting that even the susceptibility to becoming an alcoholic has some degree of genetic predisposition.[5] Given the extreme scarcity of donor livers, some patients may be prioritized over others on the transplant waiting list. Since donor livers cannot be given to everyone, transplanting a liver into an alcoholic may result in death for competing candidates whose liver disease was not their fault. All else being equal, if bioethicists avoid claiming moral deficiency or judgment, those with apparently self-inflicted ARESLD will not be deprived of treatment but will have a lower priority for transplant.[6] In contrast, another position suggests that it is often difficult to define what behaviors are punishable as these are largely personal and value-laden.[7] Still, people do not support using their own resources to support the consequences of others’ poor choices, no matter how objective.[8] In democratic societies, one must take into consideration community morals and values.[9] Even if we were to punish people for their health-adverse behaviors, we could not logistically employ the vigorous and sustained efforts necessary to determine whose actions are morally weak.[10] lll. The Liberal-Egalitarian Proposal One past argument proposes a liberal-egalitarian solution to manage personal responsibility for so-called “lifestyle diseases.”[11] This Rawlsian system combines the European-style “social safety net” commitment to social and economic equality with the American liberal notion of pluralist toleration and personal freedoms. This idealized system aims to hold people responsible for their choices rather than the consequences to mitigate the downside of blaming those who might not be blameworthy. The approach avoids determining the questionable nature of luck and personal responsibility for health outcomes, fairness in the distribution of economic burden, and the intrusiveness required to practically determine who acts in a morally wrong and health-adverse way. The liberal-egalitarian model, a theory of distributive justice, has two facets: the liberal principle that people should be held accountable for their choices and the egalitarian principle that people who make the same choices should have the same outcomes.[12] This model attempts to fuse responsibility with equity by seeking to reward good behavior and tax bad behavior rather than punish the consequences of the action and navigate who deserves treatment. For instance, the hospital bedside is not the appropriate place to introduce responsibility for one’s health outcomes.[13] This appeals to the reality that, at that time, discerning the true causes of disease was not plausible and to humanity in avoiding a heartless and cruel approach. An argument in favor of the liberal-egalitarian model considers its method of implementation. This approach assumes that the healthcare system treats all individuals regardless of their choices or ability to cover costs. The liberal-egalitarian model also assumes that a certain adverse health condition is related, statistically speaking, to the consumption of a certain good and that good can be taxed. As such, it proposes to tax the consumption of that good to finance the collective burden which arises from that good’s consumption rather than require individuals to pay for their own treatment. In the example of ARESLD, the recommended solution would be taxing all alcohol. While a systematic infrastructure is not explicit, there is the implication that a per-unit tax can be imposed on alcohol so the total tax revenue would make up for the additional healthcare costs due to consumption.[14] Upholding the principle that all people who make the same choices should face the same costs, all consumers of alcohol would pay the same tax, regardless of factors such as genetic predisposition to alcoholism, lifestyle, or expected cost of treatment. Upholding the principle of individual responsibility, this model does not deny treatment to anyone, neutralizing factors outside that individual’s control by imposing the tax ex-ante. Other people are not burdened by those who consume the good. People who consume alcohol face a burden proportional to the amount consumed. This tax-based implementation is justified so long as the tax is not prohibitively high for the average consumer. Further, the model mitigates concerns over the intrusiveness of ascribing morality to health-adverse behaviors. lV. Moral and Social Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Position Arguments against the liberal-egalitarian model concerns its many assumptions. First, this model assumes that consumption of such goods is directly related to the health outcome and that these goods can be taxed.[15] Certain people genetically predisposed to alcoholism would be predisposed to consume more alcohol. The model falls short when applied to scenarios where health outcomes are not consumption-based, such as engaging in unsafe sex or abstaining from healthy lifestyle choices like exercise. Second, some might argue that the liberal-egalitarian model fails to remain neutral. Residual moral judgments tied to consumption choices introduce non-neutrality. Although taxation in free societies is determined by democratic procedures rather than by individuals in the healthcare system, moral and value-based judgments will be implicit in deciding what behaviors are taxable, such as the purchase of cigarettes. Third, the liberal-egalitarian model fails to determine whether one’s behavior is autonomous, as socio-cultural-economic factors may influence it and behavior is more a product of society, peer pressure, or income. Those also may reflect systemic inequalities. Therefore, this model, which rewards, or taxes based solely on decisions, regardless of their consequences and motivations, fails to consider that a person’s decisions may not be completely autonomous. V. Libertarian Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Model a. State Intrusiveness as Counter to the Liberal-Egalitarian Model Last, there is a libertarian worry that if the state guarantees universal healthcare coverage to all people, the state will have to become highly intrusive and investigate people’s morals.[16] At least one-third of all disease burden in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific is attributable to lifestyle measures such as tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, and obesity.[17] With these various lifestyles, it is not likely to agree on what conduct to tax or condemn.[18] The fine-toothed comb required to determine whether each citizen has been engaging in these behaviors would intrude on daily life and personal freedom. Libertarians champion the argument that impractical intrusiveness would result from universal healthcare, and such a degree of intrusiveness would likely be universally unacceptable.[19] The liberal-egalitarian model mitigates the libertarian worry about state intrusiveness as it does not involve prying into one’s life and choices other than taxing goods. A liberal state should ideally be neutral to how people decide to live their lives. In all, libertarians can rest assured that the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model, through its ex-ante implementation, will require no prying state eyes. States that provide universal healthcare coverage and wish to condemn certain misconduct do not need to become overly intrusive to carry out measures to hold individuals accountable. b. Fairness Another libertarian worry regarding the guarantee of universal healthcare coverage in the context of lifestyle-driven diseases is that the public will be burdened unfairly with covering others’ ill-advised mistakes or bad luck. An ideal system to address this worry would link treatment or payment for treatment with whatever behavior caused that need.[20] The distribution of burdens should be linked to how different individuals contributed to the creation of those burdens. Applied to health policy, we should ask how the need for a certain treatment arose when determining how to distribute its cost.[21] The liberal-egalitarian model aspires to hold individuals responsible for their choices, not for the consequences of such choices. This model significantly mitigates the libertarian worry over unfair burdens for covering other people’s mistakes or social conditions, which lead to those bad outcomes, by ensuring to not burden others with any of the costs for the treatment of people who decide to engage in certain health-adverse behaviors. The aforementioned taxation-based system would only tax those who also engage in the health-adverse behavior through consumption, and that tax directly pays for the necessary collective treatment. As such, those who do not consume the good are not involved with the payment scheme, while those who do consume the good are responsible for payment in a matter proportional to the amount of the good they have consumed. Vl. Universal Coverage Taking a step back, one should consider whether these worries regarding the coverage of apparently self-inflicted health conditions in the context of universal healthcare are worthwhile issues. One perspective raises what is called the culturally imagined objection — an idea erroneously held by many that sick people, especially those who are poor and uneducated, bring these illnesses upon themselves due to poor decision-making and irresponsible risk-taking.[22] This perspective critiques the uniquely American view that, since individuals are free to choose their lifestyles, they should bear the costs of their lifestyle.[23] Taking this argument further, some (perhaps the strongly libertarian) would say that the poor health status among many individuals is the price individuals must pay for their American way of life and the liberty and freedom to live as they wish. However, people should not completely punish individuals for their health-adverse behaviors because these choices are largely pre-determined by a person’s socioeconomic influences.[24] The outcomes from these allegedly ill-advised behaviors, which largely affect poorer people, are not just poor behavior but rather a public health crisis. Perhaps the state and its people should take collective responsibility and cover the costs of treatment for those health outcomes without question, as a form of public service. Rather than worrying about accountability and taxing bad behavior or intrusiveness into personal decisions, some might argue that people need to collectively take responsibility for reducing the overarching systemic inequalities and covering the associated treatment costs as a measure of public health. Vll. Proposed Solution Given the strengths of the liberal-egalitarian model and taking into account libertarian and social justice-oriented objections, an ideal solution for the coverage of lifestyle-related health problems needs to consider the complex relationship between a person’s behaviors and their apparent health outcomes. It must consider how society as a whole passes judgment on behaviors and how to take into account that many health-adverse decisions are not truly autonomous decisions, as various genetic and socioeconomic factors influence them. An ideal solution combines the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model with the social justice concerns of universal coverage. Whatever the cost for the treatment of medical issues resulting in part or entirely from lifestyle and diet, taxes collected from spending associated with the behavior (like the purchase of alcohol, junk food, and cigarettes) ex-ante should fund 50 percent of the cost of treatment, while the universal healthcare taxation scheme should include the other 50 percent. Such a system would provide an incentive to avoid the purchases that can lead to unhealthy consumption and make healthier choices, slightly punish and discourage such purchases through taxation, yet not overly punish people whose outcomes may have more to do with socioeconomic factors and genetics. Adding public responsibility demonstrates acknowledgement that health care is in the public interest and can mitigate public health inequalities. This solution would fuse personal responsibility with the public responsibility of state-sponsored social improvement while ensuring that all people have fair access to necessary treatment, no matter their ability to pay. CONCLUSION The 50-50 system this paper proposes reflects both justice and personal responsibility in covering healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own health-adverse behaviors. By allocating tax revenue from consumption that contributes or even alone causes poor health outcomes, such a system incorporates personal responsibility. By using general tax revenue for health care, such a system would meet the libertarian requirement of providing care without any moral investigation of past behaviors and the social justice consideration of providing health care to those who may have unwittingly ventured into ill-health due to systemic injustice, socioeconomics, or genetics. - [1] Cappelen, A. W. (2005). Responsibility in health care: A liberal egalitarian approach. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(8), 476–480. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.010421 [2] Moss, A. H. (1991). Should alcoholics compete equally for liver transplantation? JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1295–1298. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100097032 [3] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [4] Moss, p. 1296. [5] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [6] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [7] Cohen, C. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE COHEN AND BENJAMIN (1991). Alcoholics and liver transplantation. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1299–1301. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100101033 [8] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [9] Moss, p. 1297. [10] Cohen, p. 1300. [11] Cappelen, p. 478-480. [12] Cappalen, p. 478-480. [13] Cappelen, p.479. [14] Cappelen, p. 479. [15] Cappelen, p. 479 [16] Cohen, p. 1301. [17] Cappelen, p. 478. [18] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [19] Cohen, p. 1301. [20] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [21] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [22] Kawachi, I. (2005). Why the United States is not number one in Health. Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170665.003.0013 [23] Kawachi, p. 18-33. [24] Kawachi, p. 18-33. (shrink)

The inherence heuristic offers modest insights into the complex nature of both the is–oughttension in moral reasoning and moral reasoning per se, and does not reflect the complexity of domain-specific moral heuristics. Formal and general in nature, we contextualize the process described as “inherence heuristic” in a web of domain-specific heuristics.

The computational paradigm, which has dominated psychology and artificial intelligence since the cognitive revolution, has been a source of intense debate. Recently, several cognitive scientists have argued against this paradigm, not by objecting to computation, but rather by objecting to the notion of representation. Our analysis of these objections reveals that it is not the notion of representation per se that is causing the problem, but rather specific properties of representations as they are used in various psychological theories. Our analysis (...) suggests that all theorists accept the idea that cognitive processing involves internal information-carrying states that mediate cognitive processing. These mediating states are a superordinate category of representations. We discuss five properties that can be added to mediating states and examine their importance in various cognitive models. Finally, three methodological lessons are drawn from our analysis and discussion. (shrink)

One of the core debates concerning equity in the response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change is how the responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be allocated, or, correspondingly, how the right to emit greenhouse gases should be allocated. Two alternative approaches that have been widely promoted are, first, to assign obligations to the industrialized countries on the basis of both their ability to pay (wealth) and their responsibility for the majority of prior emissions, or, second, to assign (...) emissions rights on a (possibly modified) equal per capita basis. Both these proposals ignore intra-national distributional equity. Instead, we develop a policy framework we call ‘Greenhouse Development Rights’ (GDRs) which allocates obligations to pay for climate policies (both mitigation and adaptation) on the basis of an individually quantified metric of capacity (ability to pay) and responsibility (prior emissions). Crucially, the GDRs framework looks at the distribution of income within countries and treats people of equal wealth similarly, whatever country they live in. Thus even poor countries have obligations proportional to the size and wealth of their middle and upper classes, defined relative to a ‘development threshold’. While this method nominally identifies the ‘right to development’ as applying to people, not countries, as a proposal for a treaty among sovereign nations, there is no obvious way to give legal meaning to that right. In this paper, then, we raise some of the philosophical and political questions that arise in trying to quantify capacity and responsibility and to use the ‘right to development’ as a principle for allocating costs.Footnote**The ‘Greenhouse Development Rights’ (GDRs) framework is a collective project. The core team includes the author, Tom Athanasiou, Sivan Kartha and Eric Kemp-Benedict; this is the ‘we’ that appears where the text refers to the project, as in ‘we intended this’, and so on. This paper, however, is primarily the author's own product and, beyond the description of GDRs, my collaborators have not read or approved it; thus much of the writing and philosophical speculation uses the first person singular. And, while credit for useful work goes to all team members, the blame for philosophical sloppiness remains with the author. (shrink)

Guess the defined words and write them below, one letter per numbered blank. Transfer each letter of these words to the appropriate numbered square in the diagram. The filled-in diagram should contain a quotation reading from left to right. Only black squares, not ends of lines, indicate word endings, The first letters of the guessed words should give, reading vertically, the author of the quotation and the title of the work from which it was taken. Veteran readers of the Saturday (...) Review and the Sunday New York Times should already be familiar with such double-crostic puzzles, which were originally developed by Elizabeth S. Kingsley, Doris Nash Wortman, and Thomas H. Middleton. (shrink)

Over two decades have passed since the publication of van Gelder's (1998) “dynamical hypothesis.” In that paper, van Gelder proposed that cognitive agents were not digital computers—per the representational computational approach—but dynamical systems. The evolution of the dynamical hypothesis was driven by parallel advances in three areas. Theoretically, a deeper understanding of genetics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science inspired questions about how systems within each domain dynamically interact and extend their effects across spatiotemporal scales. Methodologically, more sophisticated and domain-general tools (...) allowed researchers to discover, model, and quantify system dynamics, structure, and patterns across multiple scales to generate a more comprehensive system-level understanding of behaviors. Empirically, we can analyze a system's behavior while preserving its natural dynamics, revealing evidence that the reductionist approach leads to an incomplete understanding of the components and the overall system. Researchers have traditionally reduced a complex system into its component processes and assumed that the parts can be recombined to explain the whole. These three advances fundamentally altered our understanding of a “cognitive agent:” How their behaviors are driven by long-range coordination across multiple processes, how the interdependent and nested structure of interacting variables produces behaviors that are greater than the sum of its parts, and how environmental constraints shape adaptive yet stable behavioral patterns. (shrink)

One of the core debates concerning equity in the response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change is how the responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be allocated, or, correspondingly, how the right to emit greenhouse gases should be allocated. Two alternative approaches that have been widely promoted are, first, to assign obligations to the industrialized countries on the basis of both their ability to pay and their responsibility for the majority of prior emissions, or, second, to assign emissions (...) rights on a equal per capita basis. Both these proposals ignore intra-national distributional equity. Instead, we develop a policy framework we call 'Greenhouse Development Rights' which allocates obligations to pay for climate policies on the basis of an individually quantified metric of capacity and responsibility . Crucially, the GDRs framework looks at the distribution of income within countries and treats people of equal wealth similarly, whatever country they live in. Thus even poor countries have obligations proportional to the size and wealth of their middle and upper classes, defined relative to a 'development threshold'. While this method nominally identifies the 'right to development' as applying to people, not countries, as a proposal for a treaty among sovereign nations, there is no obvious way to give legal meaning to that right. In this paper, then, we raise some of the philosophical and political questions that arise in trying to quantify capacity and responsibility and to use the 'right to development' as a principle for allocating costs.*. (shrink)

Members of some social groups hold other members to have special obligations in virtue of their membership. But is this justified? And if so, how? I argue that there is a deep connection between the structure of certain social groups and some special obligations. The issue, then, is to determine how one might have obligations in virtue of one's membership in a particular group. In this dissertation I argue that groups capable of collective action have, as elements of their structure, (...) interpersonal relations that generate commitments and these commitments, in turn, constitute special obligations. ;I begin by arguing that groups capable of collective action must be able to coordinate or monitor the coordination of the members, and to do so within certain normative constraints. To coordinate members according to these constraints, groups must implement some form of decision procedure, a scheme by which the intentions and actions of individual members of a group are coordinated toward some collective purpose or goal. This coordination requires that in groups capable of collective action, there must be some authority system by which the members are coordinated. This authority system must be able to authorize the implementation of norms through members' practices, endorsements, or sanctions, and to adjudicate conflicts that might arise between constraints. I argue that these authority systems may be largely tacit. ;Members of groups capable of collective action do not, however, acquire obligations because of their commitments to the group per se. Rather, members of such groups acquire obligations because of the nature of the relationships they cannot help but form with one another. Their obligations form because of the commitments they have to one another in virtue of being a part of a group capable of collective action. While these obligations may not constitute all-things-considered normative requirements, they do constitute normative considerations that members of groups need to acknowledge when they determine what they ought or ought not to do. I conclude that insofar as a group is capable of collective action, members of those groups have at least these limited obligations toward one another. (shrink)

Energy contributes significantly in almost all aspects of human life as well as economic activities and plays a crucial role in the infrastructural development of a county to alleviate poverty. Generating energy from a renewable source such as small hydropower through the application of pump operating as a turbine mode called Pump as Turbine is one of the best alternatives to provide clean and inexpensive energy. Using Pump as Turbine helps in generating reasonably priced hydroelectric power for communities in underdeveloped (...) counties. This study investigates the effects of internal flow behaviour and performance of Pump as Turbine under different rotational speed and flow rate. The rotational speed is an essential physical parameter as it affects the Pump as Turbine operation. A model-specific speed centrifugal pump model with head 32, flow rate of 12.5 and the rotational speed of 2900 rpm, has been selected for the study. Numerical simulations have been conducted using the k-ω turbulence model to solve three-dimensional equations. The pump mode experimental data were used to confirm the results for better analysis. The results predicted that vortex and turbulent kinetic energy increase per rotational speed increase. Also, at the higher rotational speed, very high recirculation of flow is detected at the blade suction chamber, although the pressure side has a smooth flow. This study provides beneficial information which will serve as a reference to help improve PAT performance along with selecting PAT for a small hydropower site. Future works will consider the impact of blade thickness and cavitation in Pump as Turbine. (shrink)

Emotional states are thought to influence athletic performance. Emotions characterized by high arousal enhance exercise performance. Extant research has focused on the valence and arousal dimensions of emotions, but not whether the motivational dimension (the extent to which the emotion engenders approach or avoidance behaviors) influences exercise performance. Two studies aimed to determine whether films and music chosen to induce approach- (i.e., anger), avoidance- (i.e., fear), and neutral-oriented emotions would successfully induce their intended emotional states (Study 1) and whether anger (...) and fear emotion inductions would influence 2-mile time trial performance (Study 2). In Study 1, the films and music successfully induced their intended emotions. In Study 2, run time and perceived level of exertion did not differ between emotions across all participants or among faster running participants per a median split. However, among slower running participants, the anger induction increased the 2-mile running speed relative to the neutral induction. These findings suggest that emotions eliciting approach-related motivational states may improve exercise performance, particularly in slower runners. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

This study examines linguistic co-occurrence patterns in the discourse of individuals with communication impairments who use augmentative and alternative communication devices in the workplace by comparing them to those of non-AAC users in similar job settings. A typical workweek per focal participant was recorded and transcribed to create a specialized corpus of workplace discourse of approximately 464,000 words at the time of this analysis. A multidimensional analysis of co-occurrence patterns along functional linguistic dimensions, following Biber [Variation across Speech and Writing. (...) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], reveals differences in the macro discourse characteristics of AAC vis-a-vis non-AAC texts. Results indicate that AAC texts make use of more informational, non-narrative, and explicit textual features of discourse than their non-AAC counterparts. Implications to improve the capabilities of AAC devices to produce speech that matches baseline expectations of co-workers in the workplace are discussed. (shrink)

A growing body of research has demonstrated significant heterogeneity of hospital ethics committee (HEC) size, membership and training requirements, length of appointment, institutional support, clinical and policy roles, and predictors of self identified success. Because these studies have focused on HECs at a single point in time, however, little is known about how the composition of HECs changes over time and what impact these changes have on committee utilization. The current study presents 20 years of data on the evolution of (...) the Massachusetts General Hospital HEC. Between 1993 and 2012, the average number of committee members per year was 38 ± 3 and the average length of membership was 4.8 ± 0.4 years. During that time, the committee performed 934 consults, averaging 47 ± 3 per year. Attendance rates fell from 61.5 to 23.8 % over the study period and were inversely correlated with the total number of members. Between 1993 and 2012, the committee saw substantial growth in the diversity of the professional backgrounds of its members. Multivariate analysis, however, suggests that substantial changes in committee composition did not impact its utilization and that other factors are more likely to explain fluctuations in consultation volume. (shrink)

Eric Olson argues that the dynamic view of time must be false. It requires that the question ‘How fast does time pass?’ has an answer. But its only possible answer, one second per second, is not an answer. I argue that Olson has failed to identify what is wrong with talk of time’s passage. Then I argue that, nonetheless, he is right to reject it. To say that time passes is analogous to saying that space is dense, and to (...) ask about the rate of time’s passage is analogous to asking how dense space is. Since the questions are on a par the dynamic view of time, which requires that they are not, is mistaken. (shrink)

Standard animalists are committed to a stringent form of restricted composition, thereby denying the existence of brains, hands, and other proper parts of an organism . One reason for positing this near-nihilistic ontology comes from various challenges to animalism such as the Thinking Parts Argument, the Unity Argument, and the Argument from the Problem of the Many. In this paper, I show that these putatively distinct arguments are all instances of a more general problem, which I call the ‘Too Many (...) Candidates Problem’ . Given my formulation of the problem, it is evident that standard animalists are mistaken in believing that restricting composition is the only solution. I show that there is another option for solving the TMC. The advantage of such a position, which I call ‘unrestricted animalism’, is that it is compatible with unrestricted composition and the existence of brains and other proper parts of an organism. I conclude by sketching several strategies one can take regarding this latter solution to the TMC. (shrink)

Strong predictivism, the idea that novel predictions per se confirm theories more than accommodations, is based on a “no miracle” argument from novel predictions to the truth of theories (NMAT). Eric Barnes rejects both: he reconstructs the NMAT as seeking an explanation for the entailment relation between a theory and its novel consequences, and argues that it involves a fallacious application of Occam’s razor. However, he accepts a no miracle argument for the truth of background beliefs (NMABB): scientists endorsed (...) a successful theory because they were guided by largely true background beliefs. This in turn raises the probability that the theory is true; so Barnes embraces a form of weak predictivism, according to which predictions are only indirectly relevant to confirmation. To Barnes I reply that we should also explain how the successful theory was constructed, not just endorsed; background beliefs are not enough to explain success, scientific method must also be considered; Barnes can account for some measure of confirmation of our theories, but not for the practical certainty conferred to them by some astonishing predictions; true background beliefs and reliability by themselves cannot explain novel success, the truth of theories is also required. Hence, the NMAT is sound, and strong predictivism is right. In fact, Barnes misinterprets the NMAT, which does not involve Occam’s razor, takes as explanandum the building of a theory which turned out to predict surprising facts, and successfully concludes that the theory is true. This accounts for the practically certain confirmation of our most successful theories, in accordance with strong predictivism. (shrink)

This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, Watkins (...) shows how Kant comes to view both the generic conception of law which he develops and its different particular instances as crucial components of his systematic philosophy as a whole. This volume's new and unified account of a major current running through Kant's work will be important for scholars interested in numerous aspects of his philosophy, from the theoretical and abstract to the practical and empirical. (shrink)

Recently, Stephan Blatti has argued that a deprivationist view (DV) of death’s harm is incomplete, and he presents a view such that the kind of distinctive harm that death brings to an individual involves the restriction of that individual’s autonomy.2 Not only does death deprivation-harm us, but it also restriction-harms us. Let us label such an account—one that includes both deprivation and restriction as comprising death’s harm—as a ‘deprivationist-restrictionist view’ (or ‘DRV’). Blatti favors DRV because it avoids several worries that (...) beset DV. In this paper, I present several objections to DRV; in particular, I raise some problems for the claim that death restriction-harms us and show that even DRV does not avoid the worries of DV—so there is no reason to prefer DRV over DV. (shrink)

This book uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, of the kinds posited by scientific taxonomies. Specification relations, such as those holding between determinates and determinables (determination), are central to this logical investigation of kinds. The species–genus relation is a familiar specification relation for substantival kinds, but this book focuses on adjectival kinds—whose instances are properties—instead. Determination relations are then used to structure kinds at the same level of abstraction into property spaces, which in turn (...) leads to a theory for individuating properties (tropes). These determination relations are contrasted with realization relations, the latter being the favored way of understanding the connection between the mental and the physical. Particular attention is given to the distinction between multiple realizability and multiple determination, and it is argued that determination and realization are mutually exclusive. The claim that multiple realizability entails various senses of autonomy is defended from various reductionist challenges. These theories of determination and realization then provide general standards for establishing the autonomy of the special sciences or, conversely, their reduction. (shrink)

This collection of essays was devised by the author to study how anthropology brought the study of complex societies and world systems in to its purview.

Adam Smith is rediscovered every few generations by philosophers surprised by his subtlety, originality, and relevance. Smith’s status as mythical father of economic science and his role as canonical defender of free trade is secure within economics, but few philosophers have been more often misrepresented and underestimated. Because he is well known as an advocate of commercial society, many scholars, public intellectuals, commentators, and journalists are happy to implicate him automatically in its successes and failures, or to enlist him in (...) one side or another of the various ideological battles surrounding the utility and dangers of market economics. This book is an accessible and engaging introduction to Smith’s most important contributions to philosophy. Beginning with an introductory chapter on Smith’s life, writings and readings, Eric Schliesser locates Smith in his immediate social and philosophical context. Later chapters analyse key concepts in his core moral, political and metaphysical theories, before turning to Smith's contribution to areas of ongoing philosophical interest, especially philosophy of science, and the metaphysics of mind and self. Schliesser concludes by summarising Smith's complicated legacy in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, and explores how Smith is being 're-discovered' in contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

Recently, in this journal, Jeremy Gwiazda has offered a critique of our separationist view of hell. His objection relies on two key assumptions, and we show in our reply that both assumptions can be denied.

Biologists in the last 50 years have increasingly emphasized the role of historical contingency in explaining the distribution and dynamics of biological systems. However, recent work in philosophy of biology has shown that historical contingency carries various interpretations and that we are still lacking a general understanding of historicity, i.e., a framework from which to interpret why and to what extent history matters in biological processes. Building from examples and analyses of the long-term experimental evolution (LTEE) project, this paper argues (...) that historicity possess three essential conditions: (1) multiple possible pasts, (2) multiple possible outcomes at a given instant, and (3) a relationship of causal dependence between these two sets. These criteria can be further specified in two general forms of historicity: dependence on initial conditions and path dependence. More attention is devoted to developing a rigorous account of the latter, which captures the type of historicity displayed by stochastic processes. This paper also highlights that it is often more productive to adopt an instant-relative approach and think in terms of degree of historicity instead of trying to maintain a rigid and absolute dichotomy between historical and ahistorical (completely convergent) processes. (shrink)

Relationships between children and parents pervade the Star Wars saga, especially if people include surrogate parents. Anakin's relationship with his mother, Shmi, in the prequels impacts his trajectory toward the dark side. In The Mandalorian, Mando's role as a surrogate father to Grogu transforms them into a “Clan of Two”. But the most significant parent‐child relationship in the saga may be the one between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Confucius's teachings highlight the importance of benevolence, social order, and ritual propriety (...) among other virtues and values. This chapter shows that understanding Luke's surrender to Vader in terms of Confucian filial piety makes sense of how Luke is able to overcome the allure of the dark side and become a Jedi. Confucius's Analects has a moral framework called “exemplarism”. This is the idea that moral knowledge and practice do not start with principles, rules, duties, consequences, or character traits. (shrink)

This paper addresses the alleged tension between the kind of strong apophaticism endorsed by Maimonides and his view of worshiping God. After considering some extant resolutions to this problem, I offer a proposal that utilizes the role of silence and imitative activity in Maimonides. While this solution may not have been one that Maimonides would have offered, I argue that Maimonides had conceptual resources for offering a promising solution within his theological framework.

We develop a framework for understanding how lack of clarity in business press coverage of corporate social responsibility functions as a mediated and emergent form of strategic ambiguity. Many stakeholders expect CSR to exhibit clarity, consistency, and discursive closure. But stakeholders also expect CSR to conform to varying degrees of both formal and substantive rationality. These diverse expectations conflict with each other and change over time. A content analysis of press coverage in Denmark suggests that the business media reflect and (...) amplify the ambiguity generated by these shifting demands. We propose that this very public lack of discursive closure provides strategic advantages to CSR stakeholders by rendering the concept of CSR adaptable, resilient, and meaningful to diverse interests. From this perspective, strategic ambiguity emerges from a relational and mediated process, not from the direct intentions of individual stakeholders. Our framework suggests that CSR is best understood not as a clear or consistent agenda, but rather as a forum for sensemaking, diversity of opinion, and debate over the conflicting social norms and expectations attached to corporate activity. (shrink)

Recently, Doolittle and Inkpen formulated a thought provoking theory, asserting that evolution by natural selection was responsible for the sideways evolution of two radically different kinds of selective units (also called Domains). The former entities, termed singers, correspond to the usual objects studied by evolutionary biologists (gene, genomes, individuals, species, etc.), whereas the later, termed songs, correspond to re‐produced biological and ecosystemic functions, processes, information, and memes. Singers perform songs through selected patterns of interactions, meaning that a wealth of critical (...) phenomena might receive novel evolutionary explanations. However, this theory did not provide an empirical approach to study evolution in such a broadened context. Here, we show that analyzing songs and singers, using patterns of interaction networks as a common ontology for both, offers a novel, actionable, inclusive and mathematical way to analyze not only the re‐production but also the evolution and fitness of biological and ecosystemic interconnected processes. (shrink)

In his _Duino Elegies,_ Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being—the open—concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges—what Eric Santner calls the _creaturely_—have a biopolitical aspect: (...) they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority. Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person’s history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors. An indispensable book for students of Sebald, _On Creaturely Life_ is also a significant contribution to critical theory. (shrink)

There has recently been a revival of interest in ‘naturalizing’ ethics. A naturalization seeks to vindicate ethical realism — the idea that ethical judgments can be true reflections of a moral reality — without violating the naturalist constraint that science sets the limits of ontology. The recent revival has been prompted by examples of successful scientific reduction (e.g. temperature, water), and by the emergence of new, nonreductive naturalist strategies (e.g. for biological and mental properties). In this paper, I argue against (...) such naturalist approaches to ethics. My argument builds on the traditional one offered by G.E. Moore, namely that a naturalization would fail to respect an existing difference between the meanings of moral and naturalistic terms. I defend this line of argument against the common claim that it cannot block ‘synthetic’ property identities, ones grounded not in meaning equivalences but in empirical discoveries (as in the cases of temperature and water). I then go on to show that the Moorean argument can make trouble even for recent revisionist and nonreductive naturalist approaches. (shrink)

Given the crucial role unauthorized disclosures can play in uncovering grave government wrongdoing, it makes sense to search for a defense of justified cases of what I call “classified public whistleblowing.” The question that concerns me is what form such a defense should take. The main claim will be a negative one, namely, that a defense of whistleblowing cannot be based on individual rights, be they legal or moral, though this is indeed the most commonly proposed defense. In closing, I (...) will outline a more appealing alternative, namely, a justification defense. (shrink)

Written in 1839 and chosen as the winning entry in a competition held by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences, Schopenhauer's Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will marked the beginning of its author's public recognition and is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and elegant treatments of free will and determinism. Schopenhauer distinguishes the freedom of acting from the freedom of willing, affirming the former while denying the latter. He portrays human action as thoroughly determined but (...) also argues that the freedom which cannot be established in the sphere of human action is preserved at the level of our innermost being as individuated will, whose reality transcends all dependency on outside factors. This volume offers the text in a previously unpublished translation by Eric F. J. Payne, the leading twentieth-century translator of Schopenhauer into English, together with a historical and philosophical introduction by Günter Zöller. (shrink)

Originary Thinking deals with generative anthropology, a radically new conception of human science founded on the hypothesis that humanity emerged in a communal event in which intraspecific violence was deferred by the production of a linguistic sign. The author pursues in the areas of religion, ethics, philosophy of language, theory of discourse, and aesthetics, the exploration begun in his The Origin of Language (1981) and continued in The End of Culture (1985) and Science and Faith (1990). The present volume adds (...) two significant new elements: (1) originary analysis-a methodology for rethinking the fundamental categories of the human in terms of the originary scene. On the basis of an originary model of aesthetic experience, the author presents an outline of Western aesthetic history from the classical era to the postmodern. The fundamental premise behind Originary Thinking is that the return to the specificity of a scene of origin is the necessary guarantee of openness in human science. (shrink)