Louveau and Rosendal [5] have shown that the relation of bi-embeddability for countable graphs as well as for many other natural classes of countable structures is complete under Borel reducibility for analytic equivalence relations. This is in strong contrast to the case of the isomorphism relation, which as an equivalence relation on graphs (or on any class of countable structures consisting of the models of a sentence of L ω ₁ ω ) is far from complete (see [5, 2]). In (...) this article we strengthen the results of [5] by showing that not only does bi-embeddability give rise to analytic equivalence relations which are complete under Borel reducibility, but in fact any analytic equivalence relation is Borel equivalent to such a relation. This result and the techniques introduced answer questions raised in [5] about the comparison between isomorphism and bi-embeddability. Finally, as in [5] our results apply not only to classes of countable structures defined by sentences of ω ₁ ω , but also to discrete metric or ultrametric Polish spaces, compact metrizable topological spaces and separable Banach spaces, with various notions of embeddability appropriate for these classes, as well as to actions of Polish monoids. (shrink)

Let I be an ideal of subsets of a Polish space X, containing all singletons and possessing a Borel basis. Assuming that I does not satisfy ccc, we consider the following conditions (B), (M) and (D). Condition (B) states that there is a disjoint family F $\subseteq$ P(X) of size c, consisting of Borel sets which are not in I. Condition (M) states that there is a Borel function f: X → X with $f^{-1}[\{x\}] \not\in$ I for each x ∈ (...) X. Provided that X is a group and I is invariant, condition (D) states that there exist a Borel set B $\not\in$ I and a perfect set P $\subseteq$ X for which the family $\{B + x: x \in P\}$ is disjoint. The aim of the paper is to study whether the reverse implications in the chain (D) $\Rightarrow$ (M) $\Rightarrow$ (B) $\Rightarrow$ not-ccc can hold. We build a σ-ideal on the Cantor group witnessing (M) & ¬ (D) (Section 2). A modified version of that σ-ideal contains the whole space (Section 3). Some consistency results on deriving (M) from (B) for "nicely" defined ideals are established (Sections 4 and 5). We show that both ccc and (M) can fail (Theorems 1.3 and 5.6). Finally, some sharp versions of (M) for invariant ideals on Polish groups are investigated (Section 6). (shrink)

PurposeHappiness has been the most important goal for humans throughout history and is a significant issue among university lecturers facing a rapid digital technology change. It is usually described as a well-being state, feeling satisfied and contented, consisting of positive happenings in an individual’s life concerning the social, spiritual, economic, psychological, and physiological spheres. This research examines the relationship between happiness, attitudes toward technology, and lecturers’ job performance in higher education.Design and MethodologyThis research design was a cross-sectional design that asked (...) the respondents from lecturers of Institut Teknologi Bandung, one of the best universities with technology-based education in Indonesia, to complete a group of well-validated questionnaires. The questionnaires mentioned earlier include the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire and three other newly constructed questionnaires, made to measure attitude toward digital technology, job satisfaction, and job performance.FindingsThis research confirmed that happiness fully mediated the relationship between attitude toward digital technology and job performance. Additionally, this research also confirmed that happiness partially mediated the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. These results implied that a positive attitude toward digital technology and higher job satisfaction would lead to happier lecturers who increase their job performance.OriginalityThis study suggests that a positive attitude toward technology has a higher impact than job satisfaction as determinant factors of happiness and its association with lecturers’ job performance such as universities, especially Institut Teknologi Bandung as a technologically advanced workplace environment. Additionally, the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire framework, frequently used in studies of other countries, is now being used in the context of an Indonesian case study, precisely to measure happiness among lecturers in Indonesian higher education. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to examine male and female Olympic taekwondo competitors’ movement patterns according to their tactical actions by applying a Markov processes analysis. To perform this study, 11,474 actions by male competitors and 12,980 actions by female competitors were compiled and analyzed. The results yielded 32 significant sequences among male competitors and 30 among female competitors. Male competitors demonstrated 11 sequences initiated by an attack, 11 initiated by a counterattack, and 10 initiated by a defensive (...) action. Female competitors demonstrated nine sequences initiated by an attack, 11 initiated by a counterattack, and 10 initiated by a defensive move. The five most popular sequences were the opening and dodge, the direct attack and simultaneous counterattack, the dodge with a direct attack, the indirect attack and simultaneous counterattack, and the simultaneous counterattack with a direct attack. Markov chains help provide coaches and researchers with relevant information about the frequency of actions, both in terms of their frequency of occurrence and the order of their occurrence, during a real competition. It is suggested that coaches and athletes focus on these patterns when training for a real competition. (shrink)

Danis and colleagues (Danis, Wilson, and White 2016) fault bioethicists for insufficient action toward addressing racism and racially motivated violence, then proceed to assign them an expansive ro...

Die voranschreitenden Forschungen zum Nachlass Hans Blumenbergs zeichnen ein immer scharferes Bild eines Denkers, der sowohl umfangreiche Arbeiten zur Geistes- und Technikgeschichte vorlegte als auch das offentliche Denken beeinflusst hat - unter anderem durch Prasenz im Radio und regelmassige Beitrage zum Feuilleton von FAZ und NZZ. Der Sammelband wird durch ein bisher unveroffentlichtes Forschungsmanuskript Hans Blumenbergs aus dem Themenbereich der Technikphilosophie abgerundet, das fur den Band transkribiert und kommentiert wurde. Mit Beitragen von Hans Blumenberg (aus dem Nachlass), Alberto Fragio, Andrew (...) Hines, Sandra Markewitz, Marco Mauerer, Angus Nicholls, Martina Philippi, Josefa Ros Velasco, Nicola Zambon und Rudiger Zill. (shrink)

Hans Blumenberg wrote, in an unpublished manuscript entitled Ein Betrug? / Der böse Dämon (UNF 532-534), that «the whole world and human intelligence were hidden beneath the earth, where the relics of the precursors of life rest». The German philosopher was not a palaeoanthropologist in the strict sense but dedicated much of his life to excavating in the ground, in search of replies to the great questions about the human condition. This paper is the result of a work compiling and (...) classifying a series of unpublished texts about palaeoanthropology to be found dotted throughout his Nachlaß. The aim is to show the interest that disciplines such as palaeoanthropology aroused in the German thinker, and that his understanding of the matter, reflected in part in his anthropological-philosophical theses, has not yet been systematised. (shrink)

Self-reliance as an expected outcome of community empowerment can reduce the level of vulnerability and dependence of the community on assistance in the long term. As a form of its social responsibility, the company strives to create sustainable independence in the surrounding community through community empowerment activities. This research will illustrate the independence that occurs in the community on Gag Island through CSR programs implemented by the company. Independence is seen in the implementation of CSR programs. The research method used (...) was a descriptive research with a qualitative approach by involving local communities on Gag Island, Raja Ampat Regency, and Southwest Papua Province as the parties involved. The results showed that the community's activeness, consistency, determination, and trust indicate independence in implementing empowerment programs. In addition, the provision of knowledge, capacity building and community trust, and strengthening community participation based on integrity, consistency, loyalty, and openness, as well as collaboration with the merger of interests between the company itself and the stakeholders involved, are essential aspects in implementing CSR to create independence. However, this independence needs to be maintained and expanded properly and evenly so that CSR programs by the company can impact and benefit the community, not only for the people of Gag Island but also for those living on the surrounding islands. (shrink)

During dialog, references are presented, accepted, and potentially reused. Two experiments were conducted to examine reuse in a naturalistic setting. In Experiment 1, where the participants interacted face to face, self-presented references and references accepted through verbatim repetition were reused more. Such biases persisted after the end of the interaction. In Experiment 2, where the participants interacted over the phone, reference reuse mainly depended on whether the participant could see the landmarks being referred to, although this bias seemed to be (...) only transient. Consistent with the memory-based approach to dialog, these results shed light on how differences in accessibility in memory affect the unfolding of the interaction. (shrink)

From Lucretius’s horror loci and Buddhist drowsiness to the religious boredom of acedia and the philosophical explorations of Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, boredom has long been a subject of philosophical fascination. Its story, unfolding through millennia, encompasses apathy, weariness, disaffection, melancholy, ennui, tedium, and monotony. Today, boredom assumes new forms: the drudgery of precarious work, the alienation of neoliberalism, the emptiness of leisure, and the overstimulation of our hyperconnected, technologically saturated lives. -/- The History and Philosophy of Boredom is (...) an outstanding collection, exploring boredom’s intellectual history from its early origins in classical thought to its contemporary manifestations. Containing eighteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is organized into four thematic parts: -/- Ancient Philosophical Perspectives Religious and Medieval Explorations Modern Philosophical Investigations Critical and Interdisciplinary Approaches. -/- Topics include boredom in Socratic dialogue, Daoist and Buddhist traditions, Stoicism, and Cynicism; the religious significance of boredom in Judaism and early Christianity; boredom’s role in the works of Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Mill, and Nietzsche; philosophical pessimism; phenomenological approaches; boredom as a political phenomenon; and boredom’s intersections with capitalism, socialism, racial identity, and transhumanism. -/- The History and Philosophy of Boredom is indispensable for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, emotion studies, phenomenology, and moral psychology. It will also interest scholars in religion, classics, sociology, and the history of psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Klaudios Ptolemaios: Handbuch der Geographie, Griechisch-DeutschAlexander JonesAlfred Stückelberger and Gerd Grasshoff, eds. Klaudios Ptolemaios: Handbuch der Geographie, Griechisch-Deutsch. Vol. 1: Einleitung und Buch 1-4. Vol. 2. Buch 5-8 und Indices. With contributions from Florian Mittenhuber, Renate Burri, Klaus Geus, Gerhard Winkler, Susanne Ziegler, Judith Hindermann, Lutz Koch, and Kurt Keller. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2006. 1018 pp. 24 color and black-and-white ills. 29 maps. 1 CD-RO M. Cloth, (...) €170.Ptolemy's Geography is at the same time the only survivor of the ancient Greek literature devoted to the topic of drawing maps of the world and is the most extensive ancient list that we possess of names and locations of communities and physical features in the known parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. It may seem astonishing that a document of exceptional importance for ancient history, geography, and the history of science should have had to wait until now for a complete critical edition. In fact the last complete edition, by C. F. A. Nobbe (1843–45), presents an indiscriminate text with no apparatus beyond a skimpy eighteen-page "Index Criticus" at the end. Two other editions, by F. W. Wilberg and C. H. F. Grashof (1838–45) and by C. Müller and C. T. Fischer (1883–1901), though furnished with apparatus, were vitiated by defective knowledge of the main lines of the textual tradition and besides were never completed. The twentieth century saw major progress in the sorting out of the Geography's manuscripts, with important contributions by (among others) Joseph Fischer, Otto Cuntz, Aubrey Diller, and above all by Paul Schnabel, whose monograph on the subject was meant as a mere harbinger of an edition that he did not live to produce. Meanwhile, scholars in need of a reliable text have had to make do with a patchwork of intentionally partial editions limited to sections of Ptolemy's geographical catalogue covering specific regions.The biggest obstacle in the way of restoring the Geography arises from one of Ptolemy's profoundest insights, that a graphical object such as a world map can be reproduced more accurately if its contents are translated into a collection of numerical coordinates representing each significant point of the drawing, in effect, a digitization. About two thirds of the Geography is thus dedicated to a list of some eight-thousand place names with the longitudes and latitudes of the corresponding localities expressed in degrees and fractions of a degree, ordered [End Page 128] so that one can reconstruct the map by plotting from point to point on a suitable grid of parallels and meridians. Ptolemy thus got rid of the analogue distortions inherent in the process of copying a picture, but he proposed no measures to protect the copying of the text and numerals of his list from errors giving rise to "noise" progressively obscuring the picture. Unfortunately, Greek alphabetic numerals, notations for common fractions, and exotic place names—many of them attested in no other document—were all liable to frequent misreading in ancient and medieval manuscripts. In such material, copying errors are difficult to detect and generally impossible to undo. The modern scholar, working with an abundance of manuscript copies (none older than the late thirteenth century), is incessantly confronted by variant readings of which at least one must be wrong but for which no rational basis for discriminating exists. To complicate matters further, many of the manuscripts contain maps, and the origin of these maps and their relation to the textual history are controversial questions for which the usual resources of textual criticism are inadequate. It is not surprising if editors' appetites have been sated with modest helpings of the Geography.Now at last we have a complete and reliable critical edition of Ptolemy's book, an accomplishment made possible in the first instance by a division of labor among a competent and well-organized team, and secondly by judicious choices about what the edition should and should not attempt to do. The team, the "Ptolemaios-Forschungsstelle," affiliated with the Institute for Classical Philology of the University of Berne, comprises more than a dozen scholars led by a philologist, Alfred... (shrink)

This book presents a detailed analysis of three ancient models of spatial magnitude, time, and local motion. The Aristotelian model is presented as an application of the ancient, geometrically orthodox conception of extension to the physical world. The other two models, which represent departures from mathematical orthodoxy, are a "quantum" model of spatial magnitude, and a Stoic model, according to which limit entities such as points, edges, and surfaces do not exist in (physical) reality. The book is unique in its (...) discussion of these ancient models within the context of later philosophical, scientific, and mathematical developments. (shrink)

The author examines three fundamental concepts: existence, a priori knowledge, and value. These concepts have been recurrent concerns of western philosophy and also reveal important similarities and differences between the movements from which the author takes his departure.

This paper introduces the hypothesis that boredom may be a decisive factor in the social outbreak that took place in Chile in 2019. It is based on another hypothesis that postulates that boredom can become a political emotion capable of unleashing a revolution when it affects an entire community. The main objective of the work is to explain the theoretical, philosophical framework in which the second hypothesis is inscribed and to give reasons why, if this is true, it could be (...) applied to the specific case of Chile. In this sense, an unpublished definition of the concept of boredom is first outlined and the literature that describes boredom as a reactive and political emotion is examined. Then, the Chilean socio-political context of the last forty years is analyzed in search of isolatable factors that may be related to the experience of boredom. Lastly, an original line of research is proposed on which to work to test both hypotheses in a broader project that aims to be able to predict when a social system is on the verge of collapse because of boredom. (shrink)

Have humans been sharing the planet with other intelligent life for millions of years without realizing it? _In Defense of Dolphins_ combines accessible science and philosophy, surveying the latest research on dolphin intelligence and social behavior, to advocate for their ethical treatment. Encourages a reassessment of the human-dolphin relationship, arguing for an end to the inhuman treatment of dolphins Written by an expert philosopher with almost twenty-years of experience studying dolphins Combines up-to-date research supporting the sophisticated cognitive and emotional capacities (...) of dolphins with entertaining first-hand accounts Looks at the serious questions of intelligent life, ethical treatment, and moral obligation Engaging and thought-provoking. (shrink)

Background: The concept of conscientious objection is well described; however, because of its nature, little is known about real experiences of nursing professionals who apply objections in their practice. Extended roles in nursing indicate that clinical and value-based dilemmas are becoming increasingly common. In addition, the migration trends of the nursing workforce have increased the need for the mutual understanding of culturally based assumptions on aspects of health care delivery. Aim: To present (a) the arguments for and against conscientious objection (...) in nursing practice, (b) a description of current regulations and practice regarding conscientious objection in nursing in Poland and the United Kingdom, and (c) to offer a balanced view regarding the application of conscientious objection in clinical nursing practice. Design: Discussion paper. Ethical considerations: Ethical guidelines has been followed at each stage of this study. Findings: Strong arguments exist both for and against conscientious objection in nursing which are underpinned by empirical research from across Europe. Arguments against conscientious objection relate less to it as a concept, but rather in regard to organisational aspects of its application and different mechanisms which could be introduced in order to reach the balance between professional and patient’s rights. Discussion and conclusion: Debate regarding conscientious objection is vivid, and there is consensus that the right to objection among nurses is an important, acknowledged part of nursing practice. Regulation in the United Kingdom is limited to reproductive health, while in Poland, there are no specific procedures to which nurses can apply an objection. The same obligations of those who express conscientious objection apply in both countries, including the requirement to share information with a line manager, the patient, documentation of the objection and necessity to indicate the possibility of receiving care from other nurses. Using Poland and the United Kingdom as case study countries, this article offers a balanced view regarding the application of conscientious objection in clinical nursing practice. (shrink)

According to the thesis of Strong Predictionism, we typically have stronger evidence for a theory if it was used to predict certain data, than if it was deliberately constructed to accommodate those same data, even if we fully grasp the theory and all the evidence on which it was based. This thesis faces powerful objections and the existing arguments in support of it are seriously flawed. I offer a new defence of Strong Predictionism which overcomes the objections and provides a (...) deeper understanding of the epistemic importance of prediction. I conclude by applying this account to strategies for defending scientific realism. (shrink)

This book introduces the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant—in particular, the concepts of autonomy, dignity, and character—to economic theory, explaining the importance of integrating these two streams of intellectual thought. Mainstream economics is rooted in classical utilitarianism, recommending that decision makers choose the options that are expected to generate the largest net benefits. For individuals, the standard economic model fails to incorporate the role of principles in decision-making, and also denies the possibility of true choice, which can be independent of (...) preferences and principles altogether. For policymakers, standard decision-making frameworks recommend tradeoffs that are beneficial in terms of material goods or wealth, but may be morally questionable from a more person-centered perspective. Integrating Kantian ethics affects economics in three important ways. This integration allows for a more complete understanding of human choice, incorporating not just preferences and constraints, but also principles and strength of will or character. It demonstrates the broader impact of welfare economics, which generates policies that affect not only persons' well-being, but also their dignity and autonomy. Finally, it reconciles the traditional, individualist stance in economic models of choice with the social responsibility emphasized by many systems of philosophical ethics and heterodox schools of economics. (shrink)

Informed consent is valid only if the person giving it is competent. Although allegedly informed consents are routinely tendered, there are nonetheless serious problems with the concept of competence as it stands. First, conceptual work upon competence is incomplete: the concept is unanalyzed and no logic of competence has been identified. It is thus virtually impossible to reliably discern who is competent. ;Traditional work on competence has explicated three dichotomies from which the necessary conditions for the possibility of competence will (...) be identified, viz., that competence is either a global or a specific notion; is present in varying degrees or in virtue of a threshold; and may or not include appeals to consequences. Past efforts have failed to notice a fourth dichotomy: competence as an affective or cognitive notion. Failure to designate the appropriate arms of these dichotomies is responsible for there being, at present, no reliable test for competence. The inadequacies of a highly regarded particular test for competence, the mental status examination, are examined in light of this failure. ;Competence is located within the rule-governed practice of informed consent. That practice and hence, competence, is justified through a Kantian analysis of respect for persons. This analysis reveals that the logic of competence requires assessment in terms of specific rather than global concerns; degrees of ability rather than a threshold; both cognitive and affective abilities; and no appeal to consequences. ;Based upon the analyses of consent as an example of decision making within the practice of informed consent and of respect for persons, the capacities which jointly comprise competence are identified. These are the capacities to receive, recognize, and retrieve information; to reason about, relate to oneself, and rank options; to choose among alternatives; and, under certain circumstances, to defend one's choice. ;Identification of the logic of competence and explication of and justification for the capacities that comprise competence to consent provide a conceptual foundation for the crucial concept of competence that the informed consent process currently lacks. It should facilitate construction of a test for competence. (shrink)

Background Voluntary assisted dying became lawful in Victoria, the first Australian state to permit this practice, in 2019 via the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic). While conscientious objection by individual health professionals is protected by the Victorian legislation, objections by institutions are governed by policy. No research has been conducted in Victoria, and very little research conducted internationally, on how institutional objection is experienced by patients seeking assisted dying. Methods 28 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 family caregivers and (...) one patient about the experience of 28 patients who sought assisted dying. Participants were interviewed during August-November 2021. Data from the 17 interviews (all with family caregivers) which reported institutional objection were analysed thematically. Results Participants reported institutional objection affecting eligibility assessments, medication access, and taking the medication or having it administered. Institutional objection occurred across health settings and was sometimes communicated obliquely. These objections resulted in delays, transfers, and choices between progressing an assisted dying application and receiving palliative or other care. Participants also reported objections causing adverse emotional experiences and distrust of objecting institutions. Six mediating influences on institutional objections were identified: staff views within objecting institutions; support of external medical practitioners and pharmacists providing assisted dying services; nature of a patient’s illness; progression or state of a patient’s illness; patient’s geographical location; and the capability and assertiveness of a patient and/or caregiver. Conclusions Institutional objection to assisted dying is much-debated yet empirically understudied. This research found that in Victoria, objections were regularly reported by participants and adversely affected access to assisted dying and the wider end-of-life experience for patients and caregivers. This barrier arises in an assisted dying system that is already procedurally challenging, particularly given the limited window patients have to apply. Better regulation may be needed as Victoria’s existing policy approach appears to preference institutional positions over patient’s choice given existing power dynamics. (shrink)

Introduction -- The mathematical roots of the concept of analogy -- Aristotle : the uses of analogy -- Aristotle : analogy and language -- Thomas Aquinas -- Immanuel Kant -- Karl Barth -- Final reflections.

This is a long review of a long book, the longest to my knowledge on what educational aims and the curriculum that flows from them should be. The first half of the review is devoted to a brief summary of each of the eleven chapters. The second half raises some critical points. These cover remarks about R.S. Peters' alleged traditionalism; the salience of climate change considerations among educational aims; the claim that the arts, like the sciences, make progress; seeing the (...) elements of morality as a toolbox. The longest critical discussion is about Kitcher's notion of human fulfillment and whether he is right in his view that we should see it in terms of a successful life-plan aimed at furthering ‘the human project’. (shrink)

Are predictions about how one will freely and intentionally behave in the future ever relevant to how one ought to behave? There is good reason to think they are. As imperfect agents, we have responsibilities of self-management, which seem to require that we take account of the predictable ways we're liable to go wrong. I defend this conclusion against certain objections to the effect that incorporating predictions concerning one's voluntary conduct into one's practical reasoning amounts to evading responsibility for that (...) conduct. There is, however, some truth to this sort of objection. To understand the legitimate role of self-prediction in practical reasoning, we need to distinguish instances of coping responsibly with an anticipated failure to behave as one ought, on the one hand, from mere acquiescence in one's flaws, on the other. I argue that, to draw this distinction, we must recognize certain limits on the use of self-prediction as a ground of choice. (shrink)

Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. Challenges for machine ethicists have also been presented by Anthony Beavers and Wendell Wallach. Beavers pushes for the reinvention of traditional ethics to avoid "ethical nihilism" due to the reduction of morality to mechanical causation. (...) Wallach pushes for redoubled efforts toward a comprehensive account of ethics to guide machine ethicists on the issue of artificial moral agency. Options, thus, present themselves: reinterpret traditional ethics in a way that affords a comprehensive account of moral agency inclusive of both artificial and natural agents, or give up on the possibility and “muddle through” regardless. This series of papers pursues the first option, meets Tonkens' "challenge" and pursues Wallach's ends through Beavers’ proposed means, by "landscaping" traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. This first paper sets out the challenge and establishes the tradition that Kant had inherited from Aristotle, briefly entertains an Aristotelian AMA, fields objections, and ends with unanswered questions. The next paper in this series responds to the challenge in Kantian terms, and argues that a Kantian AMA is not only a possibility for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one. (shrink)

Propositional attitude verbs, such as think and want, have long held interest for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the granularity with which these verbs’ semantic and pragmatic properties are recoverable from their syntactic distributions, using three behavioral experiments aimed at explicitly quantifying the relationship between these two sets of properties. Experiment 1 gathers a measure of 30 (...) propositional attitude verbs’ syntactic distributions using an acceptability judgment task. Experiments 2a and 2b gather measures of semantic similarity between those same verbs using a generalized semantic discrimination task and an ordinal scale task, respectively. Two kinds of analyses are conducted on the data from these experiments. The first compares both the acceptability judgments and the semantic similarity judgments to previous classifications derived from the syntax and semantics literature. The second kind compares the acceptability judgments to the semantic similarity judgments directly. Through these comparisons, we show that there is quite fine-grained information about propositional attitude verbs’ semantics carried in their syntactic distributions—whether one considers the sorts of discrete qualitative classifications that linguists traditionally work with or the sorts of continuous quantitative classifications that can be derived experimentally. (shrink)

These readings include traditional and current analyses of the notion of human action and its importance in psychology, morals, and the law.

The Fine-tuning argument takes the existence of life as evidence that an agent had a hand in making the universe. The argument is thought to hinge on the claim that ‘fine-tuning’ of various parameters is required for life to evolve. Jonathan Weisberg argues that even granting that life can provide evidence for design, further data about the fine-tuning required add nothing to the case. Weisberg charges the argument rests on unsupported assumptions about a designer’s preference for a fine-tuned universe (over (...) and above favouring life). I argue that he is mistaken. The assumptions that Weisberg grants (for the sake of argument) are sufficient to make fine-tuning relevant to design. (shrink)