This work helps highlights how the innovations in Flathman's thought have shaped the field of political theory and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

In this paper I argue that resource allocation in publicly funded medical systems cannot be done using a purely substantive theory of justice, but must also involve procedural justice. I argue further that procedural justice requires institutions and that these must be “local” in a specific sense which I define. The argument rests on the informational constraints on any non-market method for allocating scarce resources among competing claims of need. However, I resist the identification of this normative account of local (...) justice with the actual approach to local decision-making taken within the UK National Health Service. I illustrate my argument with reference to the case of provision of In Vitro Fertilisation within the UK NHS. (shrink)

Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, unaware of the existence of the response, and unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do (...) so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (shrink)

Husserl's theory of meaning is often regarded as a somewhat obscure attempt at a view which frege stated more clearly. I argue that while this may be true with respect to the "ideas," it is false with respect to the "logical investigations." the theory presented in the latter work is superior to frege's theory. It provides an objective foundation for the semantical distinctions which concerned frege while remaining within the confines of an ontology that is more economical than frege's.

The fitness of any evolutionary unit can be understood in terms of its two basic components: fecundity (reproduction) and viability (survival). Trade-offs between these fitness components drive the evolution of life-history traits in extant multicellular organisms. We argue that these trade-offs gain special significance during the transition from unicellular to multicellular life. In particular, the evolution of germ–soma specialization and the emergence of individuality at the cell group (or organism) level are also consequences of trade-offs between the two basic fitness (...) components, or so we argue using a multilevel selection approach. During the origin of multicellularity, we study how the group trade-offs between viability and fecundity are initially determined by the cell level trade-offs, but as the transition proceeds, the fitness trade-offs at the group level depart from those at the cell level. We predict that these trade-offs begin with concave curvature in single-celled organisms but become increasingly convex as group size increases in multicellular organisms. We argue that the increasingly convex curvature of the trade-off function is driven by the cost of reproduction which increases as group size increases. We consider aspects of the biology of the volvocine green algae – which contain both unicellular and multicellular members – to illustrate the principles and conclusions discussed. (shrink)

BRENTANO'S CLAIMS ABOUT INTENTIONALITY DO NOT BEAR SOLELY\nON A CONCERN WITH THE POSITIVE NATURE OF MENTAL STATES.\nTHEY ALSO HAVE NO BEARING ON THE PROBLEM OF MENTAL/MATERIAL\nIDENTITY. PART OF THEIR POINT IS JUST TO OPPOSE A CERTAIN\nVIEW ABOUT THE PROPER OBJECTS OF AWARENESS, NAMELY THAT\nINSOFAR AS WE ARE AWARE OF OBJECTS THEY HAVE AN EXISTENCE\n"IN THE MIND." BOTH HUME AND DESCARTES HELD SUCH A VIEW. AN\nEXAMINATION OF THE NOTIONS OF "IDEA" AND "OBJECTIVE\nREALITY" SHOWS THE INACCURACY OF REGARDING DESCARTES AS A\n"REPRESENTATIVE REALIST." (...) WHAT REPRESENTS EXTERNAL NATURES\nIN THE MIND IS JUST THOSE NATURES THEMSELVES INSOFAR AS\nTHEY EXIST IN THE MIND. (shrink)

We consider a special case of heuristics, namely numeric heuristic evaluation functions, and their use in artificial intelligence search algorithms. The problems they are applied to fall into three general classes: single-agent path-finding problems, two-player games, and constraint-satisfaction problems. In a single-agent path-finding problem, such as the Fifteen Puzzle or the travelling salesman problem, a single agent searches for a shortest path from an initial state to a goal state. Two-player games, such as chess and checkers, involve an adversarial relationship (...) between two players, each trying to win the game. In a constraint-satisfaction, problem, such as the 8-Queens problem, the task is to find a state that satisfies a set of constraints. All of these problems are computationally intensive, and heuristic evaluation functions are used to reduce the amount of computation required to solve them. In each case we explain the nature of the evaluation functions used, how they are used in search algorithms, and how they can be automatically learned or acquired. (shrink)

There are a number of reasons that the Amsterdam Lectures, although not Husserl's best-known work, hold a special interest for present-day readers of Husserl.

Richard Wolin, in his article 'Nazism and the Complicities of Hans-Georg Gadamer: Untruth and Method' ( New Republic , 15 May 2000, pp. 36-45), wrongly accuses Gadamer of being 'in complicity' with the Nazis. The present article in reply was rejected by the New Republic , but is printed here to show that Wolin in his article is misinformed and unfair. First, Wolin makes elementary factual errors, such as stating that Gadamer was born in Breslau instead of Marburg. He (...) relies on a highly questionable source, Teresa Orozco, as 'definitive'. He argues often by misconstruing the evidence and guilt by association. For instance, he associates Gadamer with Werner Jaeger, with whom he disagreed and had little contact. Finally,he misinterprets basic terms in Gadamer's hermeneutics, Vorurteil and authority, attributing to them the popular sense of these terms instead of their place in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Vorurteil , popularly translated as 'prejudice', but better rendered as 'prejudgment', refers to the prior knowledge that one needs in order to understand a situation or a text. In some cases, this is part of the inherited tradition. Authority refers to the respect one pays to those one recognizes as having more knowledge than oneself: one's doctor, or parent, or teacher, a judge, or certain texts. It is not an abject surrender to all authority but the necessary respect for authority in human relationships and in society in general. By misconstruing these terms, Wolin attempts to discredit Gadamer's general philosophy,not just to demonstrate a connection to the Nazis. At the end, his argument turns into a misinformed general political attack on Gadamer as an enemy of Enlightenment values. (shrink)

On autobiographical memory tests (AMTs) using positive and negative cue words, research has consistently found that depressed individuals (relative to nondepressed controls) are more likely to recall overgeneral memories (OGMs) and are less likely to recall specific memories. A total of 56 undergraduates who scored high or low on a measure of depression were shown positive and negative word cues and event cues in a computerised AMT. Dysphoric college students made significantly fewer specific and more categoric (overgeneral) responses than controls, (...) but did not differ from controls in terms of extended responses. Results suggest that the difference in memory specificity between low and high dysphoric students generalises across word and event cues and that a computerised version of the AMT can be used as an alternative to interviews as a form of administration. (shrink)