Jianjun Mei: Cultural Interaction between China and Central Asia during the Bronze Age Charles Higham: The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor Ralph Hanna: Yorkshire Writers Christopher Ricks: Shakespeare and the Anagram Tony Wrigley: The Quest for the Industrial Revolution Linda Colley: 'This Small Island': Britain, Size and Empire Murray Pittock: Robert Burns and British Poetry Peter Pulzer: Special Paths or Main Roads? Making Sense of German History Wolf Lepenies: Overestimating Culture: A German Problem. Exile and Emigration, The (...) Survival of German Culture Angela Leighton: Elegies of Form in Bishop, Plath, Stevenson Nicholas Stern: Development as a Process of Change: Toward a Dynamic Public Economics Lord Woolf: Human Rights: Have the Public Benefitted? (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

This article argues that "gratitude to" and "gratitude that" are fundamentally different concepts. The former (prepositional gratitude) is properly a response to benevolent attitudes, and entails special concern on the part of the beneficiary for a benefactor, while the latter (propositional gratitude) is a response to beneficial states of affairs, and entails no special concern for anyone. Propositional gratitude, it is argued, ultimately amounts to a species of appreciation. The tendency to see prepositional gratitude and propositional “gratitude” as two species (...) of the same genus results from several deep-seated social and psychological factors, but must be resisted if we are to engage in constructive philosophizing about both gratitude and appreciation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Issues concerning the putative perception/cognition divide are not only age-old, but also resurface in contemporary discussions in various forms. In this paper, I connect a relatively new debate concerning perceptual confidence to the perception/cognition divide. The term ‘perceptual confidence’ is quite common in the empirical literature, but there is an unsettled question about it, namely: are confidence assignments perceptual or post-perceptual? John Morrison in two recent papers puts forward the claim that confidence arises already at the level of perception. (...) In this paper, I first argue that Morrison’s case is unconvincing, and then develop one picture on perceptual precision with the notion of ‘matching profile’ and ‘supervaluation’ : 481–495.), highlighting the fact that this is a vagueness account, which is similar to but importantly different from indeterminacy accounts : 156–184.). With this model in hand, there can be rich resources with which to draw a theoretical line between perception and cognition. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce and defend the recurrent model for understanding bodily spatial phenomenology. While Longo, Azañón and Haggard (2010) propose a bottom-up model, Bermúdez (2017) emphasizes the top-down aspect of the information processing loop. We argue that both are only half of the story. Section 1 intro- duces what the issues are. Section 2 starts by explaining why the top- down, descending direction is necessary with the illustration from the ‘body-based tactile rescaling’ paradigm (de Vignemont, Ehrsson and Haggard, (...) 2005). It then argues that the bottom-up, ascending direction is also necessary, and substantiates this view with recent research on skin space and tactile field (Haggard et al., 2017). Section 3 discusses the model’s application to body ownership and bodily self-representation. Implications also extend to topics such as sense modality individuation (Macpherson, 2011), the constancy- based view of perception (Burge, 2010), and the perception/cognition divide (Firestone and Scholl, 2016). (shrink)

Gratitude is the proper or called-for response in a beneficiary to benefits or beneficence from a benefactor. It is a topic of interest in normative ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, and may have implications for metaethics as well. Despite its commonness in everyday life, there is substantive disagreement among philosophers over the nature of gratitude and its connection to other philosophical concepts. The sections of this article address five areas of debate about what gratitude is, when it is called (...) for, and what implications it has for other debates in moral philosophy and philosophy generally. (shrink)

Philosophers generally agree that gratitude, the called-for response to benevolence, includes positive feelings. In this paper, I argue against this view. The grateful beneficiary will have certain feelings, but in some contexts, those feelings will be profoundly negative. Philosophers overlook this fact because they tend to consider only cases of gratitude in which the benefactor’s sacrifice is minimal, and in which the benefactor fares well after performing an act of benevolence. When we consider cases in which a benefactor suffers severely, (...) we see the feelings associated with gratitude can be negative, and even quite painful. I conclude with a discussion of the implications negative feelings of gratitude have for the normative question of when gratitude is owed, and for the descriptive claim in positive psychology that gratitude enhances wellbeing. (shrink)

It feels like there’s two of you inside—like there’s another half of you, which is my anorexia, and then there’s the real K [own name], the real me, the logic part of me, and it’s a constant battle between the two. The anorexia almost does become part of you, and so in order to get it out of you I think you do have to kind of hurt you in the process. I think it’s almost inevitable. We came to the (...) concept of authenticity belatedly, one might say. We had been talking to people who had a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa about their experiences of living with their condition, and though we had not raised issues of authenticity or identity ourselves, they often did. They struggled with questions of .. (shrink)

This paper examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demon- strate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this, and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states amongst agents of the same type. This is quite di erent from Schelling-like behavior, and sug- (...) gests (in his terms) that segregation is an instance of macro behavior which can arise from a wide variety of micro motives. (shrink)

According to the theory theory of folk psychology, our engagement in the folk psychological practices of prediction, interpretation and explanation draws on a rich body of knowledge about psychological matters. According to the simulation theory, in apparent contrast, a fundamental role is played by our ability to identify with another person in imagination and to replicate or re-enact aspects of the other person’s mental life. But amongst theory theorists, and amongst simulation theorists, there are significant differences of approach.

There have recently been various empirical attempts to answer Molyneux’s question, for example, the experiments undertaken by the Held group. These studies, though intricate, have encountered some objections, for instance, from Schwenkler, who proposes two ways of improving the experiments. One is “to re-run [the] experiment with the stimulus objects made to move, and/or the subjects moved or permitted to move with respect to them” (p. 94), which would promote three dimensional or otherwise viewpoint-invariant representations. The other is “to use (...) geometrically simpler shapes, such as the cube and sphere in Molyneux’s original proposal, or planar figures instead of three-dimensional solids” (p. 188). Connolly argues against the first modification but agrees with the second. In this article, I argue that the second modification is also problematic (though still surmountable), and that both Schwenkler and Connolly are too optimistic about the prospect of addressing Molyneux’s question empirically. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Health Research Council of New Zealand is the first major government funding agency to use a lottery to allocate research funding for their Explorer Grant scheme. This is a somewhat controversial approach because, despite the documented problems of peer review, many researchers believe that funding should be allocated solely using peer review, and peer review is used almost ubiquitously by funding agencies around the world. Given the rarity of alternative funding schemes, there is interest in hearing from the first (...) cohort of researchers to ever experience a lottery. Additionally, the Health Research Council of New Zealand wanted to hear from applicants about the acceptability of the randomisation process and anonymity of applicants.MethodsThis paper presents the results of a survey of Health Research Council applicants from 2013 to 2019. The survey asked about the acceptability of using a lottery and if the lottery meant researchers took a different approach to their application.ResultsThe overall response rate was 39%, with 30% from applicants in the years 2013 to 2018, and 68% for those in the year 2019 who were not aware of the funding result. There was agreement that randomisation is an acceptable method for allocating Explorer Grant funds with 63% in favour and 25% against. There was less support for allocating funds randomly for other grant types with only 40% in favour and 37% against. Support for a lottery was higher amongst those that had won funding. Multiple respondents stated that they supported a lottery when ineligible applications had been excluded and outstanding applications funded, so that the remaining applications were truly equal. Most applicants reported that the lottery did not change the time they spent preparing their application.ConclusionsThe Health Research Council’s experience through the Explorer Grant scheme supports further uptake of a modified lottery. (shrink)

We argue that two main accounts of hypocrisy— the deception-based and the moral-non-seriousness-based account—fail to capture a specific kind of hypocrite who is morally serious and sincere "all the way down." The kind of hypocrisy exemplified by this hypocrite is irreducible to deception, self-deception or a lack of moral seriousness. We call this elusive and peculiar kind of hypocrisy, pure hypocrisy. We articulate the characteristics of pure hypocrisy and describe the moral psychology of two kinds of pure hypocrites.

Substantial research examines the follower consequences of leader alignment of words and deeds, but no research has quantitatively reviewed these effects. This study examines extant research on behavioral integrity and contrasts it with two other constructs that focus on alignment: moral integrity and psychological contract breaches. We compare effect sizes between the three constructs, and find that BI has stronger effects on trust, in-role task performance and citizenship behavior than moral integrity and stronger effects on commitment and OCB than psychological (...) contract breach. These stronger attitudinal consequences run counter to our initial expectations, but they provide evidence of important conceptual distinctions and mechanisms that we articulate. BI theory suggests that BI’s greater performance impact is due to the notion that BI affects communication clarity in addition to attitudes. Results of meta-analytic structural equation modeling are consistent with this proposed dual path of BI’s impact. We highlight avenues for future research on BI and discuss how our findings inform the broader research on leader alignment. (shrink)

This article investigates a puzzle about gratitude—the proper response, in a beneficiary, to an act of benevolence from a benefactor. The puzzle arises from three platitudes about gratitude: 1) the beneficiary has certain obligations of gratitude; 2) these obligations are owed to the benefactor; and 3) the benefactor has no right to the fulfillment of these obligations. These platitudes suggest that gratitude is a counterexample to the “correlativity thesis” in the moral domain: the claim that strict moral obligations correlate to (...) moral rights on the part of the person to whom the obligation is owed. The goal of this chapter is to determine whether the three gratitude platitudes are true, and, if they are, what they tell us about the correlativity thesis. Sections 1 through 3 argue for the truth of each of the platitudes. It is then argued that while benefactors lack standing to demand, they do possess an imperfect right to gratitude: a special and morally significant standing to remonstrate with ungrateful beneficiaries. These facts suggest the following modification of the standard correlativity thesis: moral obligations entail moral rights on the part of the person to whom they are owed, which may be perfect (demandable) or imperfect. (shrink)

Apparently illegal cases of animal rescue can be either open or covert: ‘open rescue’ is associated with organizations such as Animal Liberation Victoria and Animal Liberation New South Wales; ‘covert rescue’ is associated with the Animal Liberation Front. While the former seems to qualify non-controversially as civil disobedience I argue that at least some instances of the latter could also qualify as civil disobedience just so long as various norms of civility are satisfied. The case for such a move is (...) defended against objections that covertness is inherently suspect; a failure to accept responsibility; and inconsistent with civil disobedience as a form of communication. Against such objections, the paper emphasizes the importance of respecting the open texture of the concept of civil disobedience if it is to be of continuing relevance against the backdrop of changing forms of non-violent dissent. (shrink)

The non-identity problem arises when an intervention or behavior changes the identity of those affected. Delaying pregnancy is an example of such a behavior. The problem is whether and in what ways such changes in identity affect moral considerations. While a great deal has been written about the non-identity problem, relatively little has been written about the implications for physicians and how they should understand their duties. We argue that the non-identity problem can make a crucial moral difference in some (...) circumstances, and that it has some interesting implications for when it is or is not right for a physician to refuse to accede to a patient's request. If a physician is asked to provide an intervention (identity preserving) that makes a person worse off, then such harm provides a good reason for the physician to refuse to provide the intervention. However, in cases where different (identity-altering) interventions result in different people having a better or worse life, physicians should normally respect patient choice. (shrink)

The overflow debate concerns this following question: does conscious iconic memory have a higher capacity than attention does? In recent years, Ned Block has been invoking empirical works to support the positive answer to this question. The view is called the “rich view” or the “Overflow view”. One central thread of this discussion concerns the nature of iconic memory: for example how rich they are and whether they are conscious. The first section discusses a potential misunderstanding of “visible persistence” in (...) this literature. The second section discusses varieties of attention relevant to this debate. The final section discusses the most prominent alternative interpretation of the Sperling paradigm—the postdiction interpretation—and explains how it can be made compatible with a weaker version of the rich or overflow view. (shrink)

One unresolved dispute within Heidegger scholarship concerns the question of whether Dasein should be conceived in terms of narrative self-constitution. A survey of the current literature suggests two standard responses. The first correlates Heidegger’s talk of authentic historicality with that of self-authorship. To the alternative perspective, however, Heidegger’s talk of Dasein’s existentiality, with its emphasis on nullity and unattainability, is taken as evidence that Dasein is structurally and ontologically incapable of being completed via any life-project. Narrativity imports into Being and (...) Time commitments concerning temporality, selfhood, and ethics, which Heidegger rejects. Although both positions find good exegetic support for their conclusions, they can’t both be right. In this article, I navigate a path between these two irreconcilable positions by applying insights derived from recent debates within Anglo-American literature on personal identity. I develop an alternative thesis to Narrativism, without rejecting it outright, by arguing that Dasein can be analysed in terms of what I call narratability conditions. These allow us to make sense of the prima facie paradoxical notion of historicality without narrativity. Indeed, rather than reconciling the two standard positions, I hold that the tension between them says something important about Dasein’s kind of existence. Thus I conclude that while the narrativist question Who ought I to be? is perfectly legitimate within limits, what the existential analysis of the limits on narratability reveals is that no answer to this question can ever be definitive. (shrink)

My primary concern will be to cast light upon the relation between animal guardians ('pet owners') and pets as a deep relation. I will proceed with a degree of indirectness by explaining why animal guardians can have an epistemically-privileged position when it comes to end-of-life decisions concerning pets. My contention is that they are best placed to grasp the relevant narrative considerations upon which end-of-life deliberation in marginal cases ought to depend. Such narrative-appreciation is built into the practice of treating (...) animals as pets. By virtue of having such a narrative appreciation, animal guardians can be best placed to grasp the life-role of pain and suffering. (shrink)

Metabolomics, including lipidomics, is emerging as a quantitative biology approach for the assessment of energy flow through metabolism and information flow through metabolic signaling; thus, providing novel insights into metabolism and its regulation, in health, healthy ageing and disease. In this forward‐looking review we provide an overview on the origins of metabolomics, on its role in this postgenomic era of biochemistry and its application to investigate metabolite role and (bio)activity, from model systems to human population studies. We present the challenges (...) inherent to this analytical science, and approaches and modes of analysis that are used to resolve, characterize and measure the infinite chemical diversity contained in the metabolome (including lipidome) of complex biological matrices. In the current outbreak of metabolic diseases such as cardiometabolic disorders, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, metabolomics appears to be ideally situated for the investigation of disease pathophysiology from a metabolite perspective. (shrink)

Aristotle and Natural Law lays out a new theoretical approach which distinguishes between the notions of 'interpretation,' 'appropriation,' 'negotiation' and 'reconstruction' of the meaning of texts and their component concepts. These categories are then deployed in an examination of the role which the concept of natural law is used by Aristotle in a number of key texts. The book argues that Aristotle appropriated the concept of natural law, first formulated by the defenders of naturalism in the 'nature versus convention debate' (...) in classical Athens. Thereby he contributed to the emergence and historical evolution of the meaning of one of the most important concept in the lexicon of Western political thought. Aristotle and Natural Law argues that Aristotle's ethics is best seen as a certain type of natural law theory which does not allow for the possibility that individuals might appeal to natural law in order to criticize existing laws and institutions. Rather its function is to provide them with a philosophical justification from the standpoint of Aristotle's metaphysics. (shrink)

Financial derivatives have been singled out as the major villain in the latest crisis, particularly through speculative trading by banks. Yet little attention has been paid to the fundamental rôle that derivatives play in modern capitalism. Even less has there been a focus on how the boom in derivatives-trading was prompted by the crisis of profitability and capital-accumulation. This article shows that while derivatives were one means by which speculation took off, the momentum behind this was driven by low profitability. (...) That was why banks turned their mortgage-loans into derivative-driven securities, why pension-funds placed bets on commodity-futures and why countries such as Greece used derivatives to hide the real state of their finances. Derivatives helped determine the form and magnitude of the crisis, but were not its underlying cause. Proposed reforms of the derivatives-market ignore the fundamental determinants of the financial crisis, assuming it to be a failure of regulation. (shrink)

The paper presents an interpretation of Aristotle's views on natural justice in the Nicomachean Ethics. It focuses, in particular, on Aristotle's understanding of the relationship which exists between natural justice and political justice, or between natural law and positive law. It is suggested that Aristotle's views on this subject are often misunderstood. It is also suggested that, contrary to what some commentators might think, Aristotle's comments on natural justice are actually central for our understanding of his political thought as a (...) whole. It is argued that Aristotle is, therefore, definitely a natural law theorist of some description. However, Aristotle's natural law theory is unconventional in certain respects. In particular, Aristotle does not consider natural law to be a critical standard by means of which positive law might be evaluated. This places Aristotle outside the mainstream of natural law theory as it has been traditionally understood. Aristotle is not, in this sense at least, the forerunner of the Stoic natural law tradition and of the individualistic, liberal natural law theory of the modern era. He is, rather, the founding father of what might best be described as the conservative natural law tradition, the most well known adherents of which in modern times are Montesquieu, Burke and Hegel. (shrink)

A computational modeling approach was used to test one possible explanation for the limited capacity of the subitizing phenomenon. Most existing models of this phenomenon associate the subitizing span with an assumed structural limitation of the human information processing system. In contrast, we show how this limit might emerge as the combinatorics of the space of enumeration problems interacts with the human cognitive architecture in the context of an enumeration task. Subitizing‐like behavior was generated in two different models of enumeration, (...) one based on the ACT‐R cognitive architecture and the other based on the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP). Our results provide good qualitative fits to results obtained in a variety of empirical studies. (shrink)

Abstract At stake in the dispute between Campbell and Hume is the basis for our acceptance of testimony. Campbell argues that, contrary to Hume, our acceptance of testimony is prior to experience, while Hume continues to maintain that the appropriation through testimony of the experience of others depends ultimately on one's own experience. I argue that Hume's remarks about testimony provide a non-circular account of the process by which the experience of others may become one's own; and I suggest that (...) the view of Campbell and Hume as proponents of two radically opposed positions on the epistemology of testimony represents a considerable over-simplification. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the complex interaction between attention, fixation, and one species of change blindness. The two main interpretations of the target phenomenon are the ‘blindness’ interpretation and the ‘inaccessibility’ interpretation. These correspond to the sparse view (Dennett 1991; Tye, 2007) and the rich view (Dretske 2007; Block, 2007a, 2007b) of visual consciousness respectively. Here I focus on the debate between Fred Dretske and Michael Tye. Section 1 describes the target phenomenon and the dialectics it entails. Section (...) 2 explains how attention and fixation weigh in these debates, and argues that Dretske’s hyper-rich view fails precisely because he overlooks certain effects of attention and fixation. Section 3 explains why Tye’s view is also unsatisfying, mainly because he misconceives the degree of access. Section 4 then puts forward the positive model covariance, which has it that the degree of cognitive access tracks the degree of phenomenology, and contrasts it with Block’s view on the Sperling iconic memory paradigm. The paper ends with a discussion of levels of seeing, which involve crowding, indexing, and other visual phenomena. Change ‘blindness’ is a set of phenomena that was discovered about two decades ago, yet an entirely satisfying understanding is still lacking. To move forward, a more detailed understanding of attention and fixation is called for. (shrink)

This document collects natural derivation systems for logics described in Priest, An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic [4]. It provides an alternative or supplement to the semantic tableaux of his text. Except that some chapters are collapsed, there are sections for each chapter in Priest, with an additional, final section on quantified modal logic. In each case, (i) the language is briefly described and key semantic definitions stated, (ii) the derivation system is presented with a few examples given, and (iii) soundness (...) and completeness are proved. There should be enough detail to make the parts accessible to students would work through parallel sections of Priest. (shrink)

A major and timely re-examination of key areas in the social and political thought of Hegel and Marx. The editors' extensive introduction surveys the development of the connection from the Young Hegelians through the main Marxist thinkers to contemporary debates. Leading scholars including Terrell Carver, Chris Arthur, and Gary Browning debate themes such as: the nature of the connection itself scientific method political economy the Hegelian basis to Marxs' "Doctoral Dissertation" human needs history and international relations.

This article discusses the concept of epistemic authority in the context of English law relating to expert testimony. It distinguishes between two conceptions of epistemic authority, one strong and one weak, and argues that only the weak conception is appropriate in a legal context, or in any other setting where reliance on experts can be publicly justified. It critically examines Linda Zagzebski's defence of a stronger conception of epistemic authority and questions whether epistemic authority is as closely analogous to practical (...) authority as she maintains. Zagzebski elucidates a kind of deference that courts generally, and rightly, try to avoid. Her concept of ‘first person reasons’, however, does capture an important aspect of the deliberations of conscientious legal actors. (shrink)

For sexual purposes, animals are off limits. But if we regard attributions of species membership as unimportant in familiar ethical contexts, then it may be difficult to explain why this is the case. Someone who is unimpressed by appeals to species membership as a basis for favoring humans over non-humans may remain similarly unimpressed by such appeals when sex becomes an issue. Species barriers may seem to be beside the point. Peter Singer’s attitude toward human sexual relations with non-humans leans (...) heavily in this direction. In a notorious book review where more was perhaps implied than said, Singer advanced the claim that, in the absence of any cruelty or physical harm, sexual relations with non-human animals would not be “an offence to our status and dignity.” And, insofar as we do not regard status and dignity as the main issue here, we may be inclined to agree. However, what follows will lean in the opposite direction to Singer and will argue that once we have set aside any consideration of status and dignity, we will still have significant grounds for ruling out familiar forms of sex with familiar, terrestrial, non-human animals under ordinary circumstances that fall short of the fictionally-extreme. However, the grounds in question turn out to concern something other than species membership simpliciter. (shrink)

First published in 1985, this title includes contributions from leading economists and addresses many seminal aspects of Keynes' work and methods. This revival will be of particular interest to lecturers and advanced students of economics.

Abstract: For William Blattner, Heidegger's phenomenology fails to demonstrate how a nonsuccessive temporal manifold can ‘generate’ the appropriate sequence of world-time Nows. Without this he cannot explain the ‘derivative’ status of ordinary time. In this article I show that it is only Blattner's reconstruction that makes failure inevitable. Specifically, Blattner is wrong in the way he sets out the explanatory burden, arguing that the structure of world-time must meet the traditional requirements of ordinary time logic if the derivation is to (...) succeed. He takes this to mean: mundane ‘tasks’, the contents of world-time nows, must form a transitive series, importing back into world-time the very structure that Heidegger says is derived by its levelling-off. I argue, instead, that world-time nows, seen at the level of lived content, can be quite ‘irrational’ but this is perfectly consistent with the generative thesis. Adapting Blattner's useful suggestion that temporality is sequence building or ‘iterative’ I show that iteration does not manifest itself at the level of tasks but at the ‘existential’ level of my involvement in a task. Depriving that involvement of its expressive content is what accounts for the levelling-off of the world-time now and thus the derivation of the ordinary concept of time. (shrink)

In the present article, I attempt to relate Saul Kripke's “sceptical paradox” to some issues about the self; specifically, the relation between the self and its mental states and episodes. I start with a brief reconstruction of the paradox, and venture to argue that it relies crucially on a Cartesian model of the self: the sceptic regards the Wittgensteinian “infinite regress of interpretation” as the foundation of his challenge, and this is where he commits the crucial mistake. After the diagnosis, (...) I attempt to sketch my own model of the self and its mental states and episodes. This tentative picture binds meaning and the self together, stressing the subjective aspect of meaning without committing the same fallacy. The solution ventured here is relatively independent of the secondary literatures on the sceptical paradox of following rules, for it aims to provide a new angle to understand and meet the challenge presented by the sceptic. (shrink)