Many topics have not been covered, in most cases because I don't know quite what to say about them. Would it be possible to add a decidability predicate to the language? What about stronger connectives, like exclusion negation or Lukasiewicz implication? Would an expanded language do better at expressing its own semantics? Would it contain new and more terrible paradoxes? Can the account be supplemented with a workable notion of inherent truth (see note 36)? In what sense does stage semantics (...) lie “between” fixed point and stability semantics? In what sense, exactly, are our semantical rules inconsistent? In what sense, if any, does their inconsistency resolve the problem of the paradoxes?The ideals of strength, grounding, and closure together define an intuitively appealing conception of truth. Nothing would be gained by insisting that it was the intuitive conception of truth, and in fact recent developments make me wonder whether such a thing exists. However that may be, until the alternatives are better understood it would be foolish to attempt to decide between them. Truth gives up her secrets slowly and grudgingly, and loves to confound our presumptions. (shrink)

This chapter explores some fundamental consequences of the correspondence between physical process and computations. Most physical questions may be answerable only through irreducible amounts of computation. Those that concern idealized limits of infinite time, volume, or numerical precision can require arbitrarily long computations, and so be considered formally undecidable. The behavior of a physical system may always be calculated by simulating explicitly each step in its evolution. Much of theoretical physics has, however, been concerned with devising shorter methods of calculation (...) that reproduce the outcome without tracing each step. Computational irreducibility is common among the systems investigated in mathematics and computation theory, but it may well be the exception rather than the rule, since most physical questions may be answerable only through irreducible amounts of computation. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that there is no free will problem in forensic psychiatry by showing that free will or its lack is not a criterion for any legal doctrine and it is not an underlying general foundation for legal responsibility doctrines and practices. There is a genuine metaphysical free will problem, but the article explains why it is not relevant to forensic practice. Forensic practitioners are urged to avoid all usage of free will in their forensic thinking and work product (...) because it is irrelevant and spawns confusion. (shrink)

One widely held view of prenatal screening is that its foremost aim is, or should be, to enable reproductive choice; this is the Pure Choice view. The article critiques this position by comparing it with an alternative: Public Health Pluralism. It is argued that there are good reasons to prefer the latter, including the following. Public Health Pluralism does not, as is often supposed, render PNS more vulnerable to eugenics-objections. The Pure Choice view, if followed through to its logical conclusions, (...) may have unpalatable implications, such as extending choice well beyond health screening. Any sensible version of Public Health Pluralism will be capable of taking on board the moral seriousness of abortion and will advocate, where practicable, alternative means of reducing the prevalence of disease and disability. Public Health Pluralism is at least as well-equipped as the Pure Choice model to deal with autonomy and consent issues. (shrink)

This paper explains how the notion of justification transmission can be used to ground a notion of knowledge transmission. It then explains how transmission theories can characterise schoolteacher cases, which have prominently been presented as counterexamples to transmission theories.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Ernest Sosa has recently argued that the knowledge we get from instruments and the knowledge we get from testimony is similar in important ways. Most importantly, the justification that supports it is similar in kind – both instrumental justification and justification from testimony is to be understood in terms of reliability. I argue that Sosa’s theory is problematic. Specifically, I argue that we can take certain attitudes towards people that we cannot coherently take towards instruments. This, I argue, grounds a (...) distinction between the kind of justification that testimony can make available and the kind of justification that instruments can make available. The result is that reliability cannot provide a complete explanation of the justification that testimony makes available. (shrink)

A number of prominent nonconsequentialists support the thesis that we can wrong the dead by violating their moral claims. In contrast, this study suggests that the arguments offered by Thomson, Scanlon, Dworkin, Feinberg and others do not warrant posthumous rights because having claim-grounding interests requires an entity to have the capacity to experience significance. If dead people don't have this capacity, there is no reason to attribute claims to them. Raising doubts about prominent hypothetical examples of ‘no-effect injury’, the study (...) concludes that nonconsequentialists should consider adopting an error theory regarding posthumous claims, and suggests two alternative explanations of the relevant moral domains. (shrink)

How do a country’s basic institutions enable or hinder women’s rise to the boards of public companies? The study evaluates this question with reference to the five basic institutions that research suggests are common across all countries: family, education, economy, government, and religion. The study draws on a sample, which consists of 23 countries, and the study is framed in neo-institutional theory. In analyzing the role of these institutions, the article seeks to understand better the relationships between specific institutions and (...) the share of board seats held by women. The results suggest that four of the five basic institutions are related to the share of board seats women hold. Family, education, economy, and government influence women’s rise to the board; however, religion does not influence women’s rise to the corporate board of directors. (shrink)

Critics of survival research often claim that the survival hypothesis is conceptually problematic at best, and literally incoherent at worst. The guiding intuition behind their skepticism is that there’s an essential link between the concept of a person (or personality or experience) and physical embodiment. Thus (they argue), since by hypothesis postmortem individuals such as ostensible mediumistic communicators have no physical body, there’s something wrong with the very idea of a postmortem person, personality or experience. However, critics can’t simply beg (...) the question and assert that physical embodiment is essential to personhood, personality, or experience, because the evidence suggesting survival is a prima facie challenge to the contrary. On the other hand, defenders of ostensible mediumistic communication need to explain how postmortem awareness and knowledge of the current physical world can occur without a physical body that experiences the world and represents it accurately enough to ground veridical postmortem reports. This paper will fi rst consider why survivalists face potentially serious problems in trying to make sense of apparent postmortem perception. Then it will consider a plausible—and arguably the only—way to deal with the issues. However, that solution turns out to be a double-edged sword. Ironically, the best way to deal with the problem of perspectival postmortem awareness may render the survival hypothesis gratuitous. (shrink)

In this paper we review the factors alleged to be responsible for the creation of inaccurate reports among preschool-aged children, focusing on so-called "source misattribution errors." We present the first round of results from an ongoing program of research that suggests that source misattributions could be a powerful mechanism underlying children′s false beliefs about having experienced fictitious events. Preliminary findings from this program of research indicate that all children of all ages are equally susceptible to making source misattributions. Data from (...) a follow-up wave of data indicate that very young children may be disproportionately vulnerable to these kinds of errors when the procedure is changed slightly to create mental images more easily. This vulnerability leads younger preschoolers, on occasion, to claim that they actually experienced events that they only thought about. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate over the veracity and durability of delayed reports of early memories, repressed memories, dissociative states, and the validity risks posed by therapeutic techniques that entail repeated visually guided imagery inductions. (shrink)

An explanation of how to organize and teach a course in recent continental thought, including treatments of the major figures in critical theory, hermeneutics, structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalytic feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. Reprint from *In the Socratic Tradition: Essays on Teaching Philosophy*, ed. Tziporah Kasachkoff (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).

The use of automobiles is a major cause of worldwide environmental disruption, including global warming. Policies designed to curb the environmental impact of automobiles present tradeoffs that high school graduates should be prepared to evaluate. This article compares how a group of high school students and a group of specialists with expertise in transportation issues, climate change, or both evaluated two policies designed to ameliorate the impact of automobiles. The policies were a $1 per gallon gasoline tax and a “feebate” (...) policy, which creates additional fees on the purchase of fuel-inefficient automobiles but offers rebates on the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles. One goal of the study was to identify knowledge and beliefs that students bring to the task as well as to identify misconceptions they may have. Another goal was to identify knowledge used by the specialists that may be accessible or useful to high school students. (shrink)

You can find countless books dedicated to student success and resilience. But what about the faculty? What do we do to help college faculty cultivate their professional and personal growth and resilience? During more than three decades as a teacher and workshop facilitator, Steve Piscitelli noticed that many educators can become isolated from their colleagues and their larger institutional culture. They become "islands" disconnected from the potential power of the teaching and learning community. That isolation can affect teaching efficacy and (...) resilience. To encourage educators to embrace the power of collaboration, Piscitelli outlines the "7Rs" for success: relationships, relevance, resources, rainbows, responsibility, reflection, and resilience. He created thirty-seven scenarios, based on real life issues. Each shows how to apply these seven themes to better adapt to professional and personal challenges educators face. The scenarios raise questions about the classroom, work-life integration, collaboration with coworkers, and interpersonal relationships with supervisors. Every teaching and learning situation-every one-gives us the opportunity to take stock of and strengthen our own resilience level. And we do not have to do it alone. That is the beauty of our calling! And that is the strength of this book. It recognizes the power of a collegial teaching and learning community. Piscitelli supplements the information and scenarios with links to brief thought-provoking videos (approximately sixty seconds each) that encapsulate major themes and discussion points. More information at www.stevepiscitelli.com. I think it's brilliant. I often feel like I'm on an island as a professor. -Ashli Archer, Professor I like how you let people know that even though you have developed a table of contents, they might want to skip around. The flexibility will be very appealing.-Erin Hoag, VP of Financial Services and Strategic Development, Innovative Educators This book will be a welcome resource! -Todd Stanislav, Director, Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning Wow, you are covering some controversial topics! This book is going to be different and invaluable!-Pam Ranallo, Co-Owner, Innovative Educators Your scenario addressing the issue of favoritism vs. jealousy demonstrates amazing insight and ability to address the "hard" topics. Bravo!-Karen Armstrong, Career Counselor I think this is a wonderful idea and have never seen anything along these lines before!-Mary Boone Treuting, Director of Center for Academic Success and the Center for Teaching Excellence. (shrink)

This paper continues the recent tradition of investigating iterated AGM revision by reasoning directly about the dynamics for total pre-order (“implausibility ordering”) representations of AGM revision functions. We reorient discussion, however, by proving that symmetry considerations, almost by themselves, suffice to determine a particular, AGM-friendly implausibility ordering dynamics due to Spohn 1988, which we call “J-revision”. After exploring the connections between implausibility ordering dynamics and the social choice theory of Arrow 1963, we provide symmetry arguments in the social choice-theoretic framework (...) for an interesting generalization of J-revision due to Nayak 1994. We conclude by arguing that the symmetry principles that uniquely favor J-revision and its generalizations are importantly expressive of the purely qualitative framework for representing beliefs that distinguishes the AGM program. Our results therefore comprehensively vindicate Spohn's 1988 conjecture that essentially J-revision is the best that can be done by way of a purely qualitative model of belief revision. (shrink)

Lately I've been giving a great deal of thought to the nature of human (and other organic) abilities. In part, this is connected to my recent research into multiple personality and the need to explain, not only the partitioning of abilities and skills among alternate personalities, but also the enhanced levels of functioning that some of them exhibit (and for that matter, the exceptional performances of "nonmultiples" in hypnotic and other sorts of dissociative states). My interest in this topic is (...) also connected to my ongoing study of savants and prodigies, who apparently have much to teach us about the limits (and perhaps also the latency) of human abilities. At bottom, I suppose, it connects with my general and longstanding concern with problems of psychological explanation, particularly in light of the gross inadequacies of trendy computational theories of the mind. (shrink)

Tracks the sublime art movement from Kant to the 21st century and onwards to a new future Stephen Zepke tracks the sublime art movement from its beginnings in Kant to its flowering in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He shows that the idea of sublime art waxes and wanes in the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Ranciere and the recent Speculative Realism movement. With it, a visionary politics of art seeks (...) to give it the most creative power possible: the power to overcome our conditions and embrace the unknown. (shrink)

I argue that Earman and Norton's familiar "hole argument" raises questions as to whether GTR is a deterministic theory only given a certain assumption about determinism: namely, that to ask whether a theory is deterministic is to ask about the physical situations described by the theory. I think this is a mistake: whether a theory is deterministic is a question about what sentences can be proved within the theory. I show what these sentences look like: for interesting theories, a harmless (...) bit of infinitary logic puts in an appearance. (shrink)

Presents close analysis of eight of Francis Bacon's texts in order to investigate the relation of his religious views to his instauration. Attempts to correct the persistent misconception of Bacon as a secular modern who dismissed religion in order to promote the human advancement of knowledge"--Provided by publisher.

In all fields of clinical medicine, there is an increasing awareness that outcome must be assessed in terms of quality of life and cost effectiveness, rather than merely length of survival. This is especially the case when considering decompressive craniectomy for severe traumatic brain injury. The procedure itself is technically straightforward and involves temporarily removing a large section of the skull vault in order to provide extra space into which the injured brain can expand. A number of studies have demonstrated (...) many patients going on to make a good long-term functional recovery, however, this is not always the case and a significant number survive but are left with severe neurocognitive impairment. Unfortunately, many of these patients are young adults who were previously fit and well and are, therefore, likely to spend many years in a condition that they may feel to be unacceptable, and this raises a number of ethical issues regarding consent and resource allocation. In an attempt to address these issues, we have used the analytical framework proposed by Jonsen, that requires systematic consideration of medical indications, patient preferences, quality of life and contextual features. (shrink)

I argue that a new solution to the semantic paradoxes is possible based on truth-making. I show that with an appropriate understanding of what the ultimate truth and falsity makers of sentences are, it can be demonstrated that sentences like the liar are alethically undecidable. That means it cannot be said in principle whether such sentences are true, not true, false, not-false, neither true nor false, both true and false, and so on. I argue that this leads to a solution (...) to the semantic paradoxes that appears to be free of revenge problems, allows us to maintain classical logic and the validity of the T-schema. (shrink)

There is a genuine and profound problem about what it consists in for anything to be yourself. Once (perhaps per impossibile) all the empirical and modal facts about a particular human being are in, it still remains unexplained both what being you is, and why that human being is yourself. Being you seems an “extra” feature of anything. The problem admits of no scientific solution, and “being you” resists any purely logical analysis. It is argued that the problem is metaphysical, (...) and that because metaphysical problems have theological answers, being you, and why anything is you may only be explained theologically. You are this soul, this immaterial presence, created by God. A new argument for the existence of God, the Autological Argument, is briefly presented. (shrink)

In this discussion, the author asks the question if Oakeshott’s famous depiction of a practice might be understood in relation to contemporary cognitive science, in particular connectionism (the contemporary cognitive science approach concerned with the problem of skills and skilled knowing) and in terms of the now conventional view of "normativity" in Anglo-American philosophy. The author suggests that Oakeshott meant to contrast practices to an alternative "Kantian" model of a shared tacit mental frame or set of rules. If cognitive science, (...) in its connectionist forms, allows us to give a naturalistic though nonreductive sense to his words, Oakeshott, like other philosophers who have employed the concept of tradition, expanded his discussion into a broader reconsideration of the nature of theorizing, a metaphilosophy. And this extension can be understood in relation to such recent thinkers as McDowell and, in particular, to the problem of the acquisition of the normative. Key Words: idealism • Oakeshott • connectionism • normativity. (shrink)