The Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency found in Wonderful Life can be dissected into three premises: palaeontological, macro-evolutionary, and developmental. Discussions of evolutionary contingency have revolved primarily around the developmental. However, a shift in methodological practice and new palaeontological evidence subsequent to the book’s publication appears to threaten the palaeontological premise that asserts high Cambrian disparity, or, roughly, that morphological differences between the Cambrian species were high. This presents a prima facie problem: Did the Cambrian consist of enough anatomical variety (...) to fuel a different outcome upon a replay of the tape of life? I investigate the role that disparity plays in the Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency and conclude that the reduced disparity view does not undermine the argument, per se. As for the macro-evolutionary premise, Gould never offers any explicit justification for the idea that species sorting was indiscriminate or ‘lottery-like’ (though he certainly gestures at it). Putting aside the exegetical, I consider certain empirical avenues for underwriting the macro-evolutionary premise and argue that the most plausible route is to appeal to the special status of mass extinctions, a move that is not entirely unfamiliar to macro-evolutionists. That is, mass extinctions can be good sources of contingency due to their being ‘chancy’ in at least three respects. In sum, I update the palaeontological and macro-evolutionary premises as to reconstrue the Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency in its strongest form. (shrink)

In this path breaking volume, leading researchers from psychology, linguistics, philosophy and primatology offer complementary perspectives on the role of intersubjectivity in the context of human development, comparative cognition and...

T. S. Champlin; VII*—Tendencies, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, Pages 119–134, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/9.

This paper demonstrates the undecidability of a number of logics with quantification over public announcements: arbitrary public announcement logic, group announcement logic, and coalition announcement logic. In APAL we consider the informative consequences of any announcement, in GAL we consider the informative consequences of a group of agents all of which are simultaneously making known announcements. So this is more restrictive than APAL. Finally, CAL is as GAL except that we now quantify over anything the agents not in that group (...) may announce simultaneously as well. The logic CAL therefore has some features of game logic and of ATL. We show that when there are multiple agents in the language, the satisfiability problem is undecidable for APAL, GAL, and CAL. In the single agent case, the satisfiability problem is decidable for all three logics. (shrink)

I argue here that in the end Bourdieu's theory of practice fails to overcome the problem on which it expressly centers, namely, subject-object dualism. The failure is registered in his avowed materialism, which, though significantly "generalized," remains what it says: a materialism. In order to substantiate my criticism, I examine for their ontological presuppositions three areas of his theoretical framework pertaining to the questions of (1) human agency (as seen through the conceptual glass of the habitus), (2) otherness, and (3) (...) the gift. By scrutinizing Bourdieu's powerful and progressive social theory, with an eye to finding fault, I hope to show the need to take a certain theoretical action, one that is patently out of keeping with the usual self-presentation and self-understanding of social science. The action I have in mind is this: because the problem of subject-object dualism is in the first place a matter of ontology, in order successfully to address it there must take place a direct shift of ontological starting point, from the received starting point in Western thought to one that projects reality in terms of ambiguity that is basic. With this shift the dualism of subject and object dissolves by definition, leaving a social reality that, for reasons of its basic ambiguity, is best approached as a question of ethics before power. (shrink)

Classical text on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy; with Āloka Sanskrit commentary.

T. S. Champlin; VII*—Tendencies, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, Pages 119–134, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/9.

Externalism holds that the content of our utterances and thoughts are determined partly by the environment. Here, I offer an argument which suggests that externalism is incompatible with a natural view about ontological commitment--namely, the Quinean view that such commitments are fixed by the range of the variables in your theory. The idea in brief is that if Oscar mistakenly believes that water = XYZ, the externalist ontologically commits Oscar to two waterish kinds, whereas the Quinean commits him to one (...) such kind (albeit a metaphysically impossible kind). The penultimate section addresses a variety of objections to the argument. (shrink)

W artykule tym przedstawiony został system aksjomatyczny fonologii teoretycznej, stanowiący pewną modyfikację teorii opublikowanej przez autora w pracyLogiczna rekonstrukcja pojęcia fonemu (Studia Logica XI, 1961, s. 139–183).

Книга предназначена для философов, правоведов и специалистов по естественным наукам, а также для заинтересованных читателей.

A questionnaire relating to attitudes towards setting economic priorities within the health care system was sent to all 151 general practitioners in Northern Norway. Of these, 109 (72 per cent) responded. Ninety-six per cent of the respondents agreed or partly agreed that the setting of economic priorities within the health care system was necessary. Ninety-three per cent had experienced a conflict between their responsibility towards the individual patient and the requirement for them to manage the health budget. The responses suggest (...) that doctors act more in the interests of their patient than the interests of society. However, 68 per cent reported having refrained from giving the best treatment to patients because it was too expensive. As many as 60 per cent of the respondents wanted more public guidelines. Only 10 per cent wanted doctors to have more influence in difficult questions arising from setting priorities. (shrink)

This draft now appears (in revised form) as Chapter 7 of _Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_. See http://philpapers.org/rec/PARSFT-3.

Some worry that semantic externalism is incompatible with knowing by introspection what content your thoughts have. In this paper, I examine one primary argument for this incompatibilist worry, the slow-switch argument. Following Goldberg , I construe the argument as attacking the conjunction of externalism and “skeptic immune” knowledge of content, where such knowledge would persist in a skeptical context. Goldberg, following Burge :649–663, 1988), attempts to reclaim such knowledge for the externalist; however, I contend that all Burge-style accounts vindicate that (...) a subject can introspectively know that she is thinking that “water is wet.” They do not yet show how a subject can introspectively know what she is thinking—which is the distinctive type of knowing at issue in the slow-switch argument. Nonetheless, I subsequently amend the Burge-style view to illustrate how an externalist can introspectively “know-what” content her thought has, and know it in a skeptic immune manner, despite what the slow-switch argument may suggest. For one, I emphasize that “knowing what” can be ontologically non-committal . For another, following Boer and Lycan , I stress that “knowing what” is purpose-relative–and for at least some purposes, it seems possible for the externalist to “know what” content her thought has, even if skeptical hypotheses about XYZ are relevant. (shrink)