"Dingli selects five particular contemporary philosophical topics which McDowell deals with and investigates in detail the implications of particular points of view, analysing the current literature on each topic and drawing out shortcomings and possibilities for overcoming them. This work is, then, both a critique and complement to McDowell's text."--Jacket.

Affordances are possibilities for action offered by the environment. Recent research on affordances holds that there are differences in how people experience such possibilities for action. However, these differences have not been properly investigated. In this paper I start by briefly scrutinizing the existing literature on this issue, and then argue for two claims. First, that whether an affordance solicits action or not depends on its relevance to the agent’s concerns. Second, that the experiential character of how an affordance solicits (...) action depends on the character of the concern to which it is relevant. Concerns are conceived of as bodily forms of responsiveness, and solicitations are experienced through this responsiveness. The main aim of this paper is to make clear that an understanding of experiential differences in solicitations has to be based on a phenomenological appreciation of how one experiences one’s responsiveness to those solicitations. In the remainder of the paper I show how such a phenomenological appreciation reveals several characteristics of our responsiveness and I briefly explore three of them: valence, force and mineness. In the final section I discuss the self-referentiality of affordances in light of the current proposal, and argue that this self-referentiality is broader than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

The article proposes a theoretical model to account for changes in self due to Deep Brain Stimulation. First, we argue that most existing models postulate a very narrow conception of self, and thus fail to capture the full range of potentially relevant DBS-induced changes. Second, building on previous work by Shaun Gallagher, we propose a modified ‘pattern-theory of self’, which provides a richer picture of the possible consequences of DBS treatment.

Background Moral distress, or the inability to carry out what one believes to be ethically appropriate because of constraints or barriers, is understudied in obstetrics and gynecology. We sought to characterize moral distress among Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) fellows using a standardized survey. Methods We disseminated a national anonymized survey study of MFM fellows electronically regarding moral distress using a validated questionnaire with supplemental questions pertaining to specific challenges within MFM clinical care. Multivariable linear regression modeling was used to examine the (...) association between abortion restrictions, maternal mortality, and moral distress, controlling for demographic variables. Thematic analysis was performed for the free text responses elaborating upon moral distress and grouped by thematic elements. We hypothesized that training in states with more abortion restrictions and higher maternal mortality would be associated with higher moral distress scores. Results Among 245 total responses (61% response rate), 177 complete responses (44% complete response rate) were included for analysis. Most of our respondents identified as female (78.5%), White (71.8%), and training in urban programs (83.1%). 37.9% of respondents reported training in the Northeast, with the remainder of respondents evenly distributed across the United States. The mean score for the validated questions was 85.9 ± 48.8, with female gender identity associated with higher measures of moral distress on the validated portion of the questionnaire as compared to male gender identity (90.1 ± 49.2 vs. 70.4 ± 44.7, p < 0.05), whereas more advanced training was associated with higher measures of moral distress on the supplemental questions as compared to those less advanced in training (20.9 ± 11.8 vs. 28.5 ± 15.9 vs. 25.9 ± 15.6 for PGY-5 vs. PGY-6 vs. PGY-7 and PGY-8 combined, respectively, p < 0.05). After adjustment, higher measure of moral distress on the validated questionnaire was associated with training in states designated “Abortion restrictive” as compared to “Abortion most protective” (beta estimate 27.80 and p < 0.01). Of 34 free responses, 65% referred to limitations on abortion access and reproductive justice as causes of significant moral distress. Conclusion MFM fellows who identify as female reported higher measures of moral distress, as well as those training in states with more abortion restrictions. Among free text respondents, abortion restrictions underlie a significant proportion of moral distress. (shrink)

本书内容包括:商鞅大有作为的一生、改革家商鞅、思想家商鞅、军事家商鞅、商鞅的为人、商鞅的历史地位和影响等.

The recent literature abounds with accounts of the semantics and pragmatics of so-called predicates of personal taste, i.e. predicates whose application is, in some sense or other, a subjective matter. Relativism and contextualism are the major types of theories. One crucial difference between these theories concerns how we should assess previous taste claims. Relativism predicts that we should assess them in the light of the taste standard governing the context of assessment. Contextualism predicts that we should assess them in the (...) light of the taste standard governing the context of use. We show in a range of experiments that neither prediction is correct. People have no clear preferences either way and which taste standard they choose in evaluating a previous taste claim crucially depends on whether they start out with a favorable attitude towards the object in question and then come to have an unfavorable attitude or vice versa. We suggest an account of the data in terms of what we call hybrid relativism. (shrink)

Epistemic invariantism, or invariantism for short, is the position that the proposition expressed by knowledge sentences does not vary with the epistemic standard of the context in which these sentences can be used. At least one of the major challenges for invariantism is to explain our intuitions about scenarios such as the so-called bank cases. These cases elicit intuitions to the effect that the truth-value of knowledge sentences varies with the epistemic standard of the context in which these sentences can (...) be used. In this paper, I will defend invariantism against this challenge by advocating the following, somewhat deflationary account of the bank case intuitions: Readers of the bank cases assign different truth-values to the knowledge claims in the bank cases because they interpret these scenarios such that the epistemic position of the subject in question differs between the high and the low standards case. To substantiate this account, I will argue, first, that the bank cases are underspecified even with respect to features that should uncontroversially be relevant for the epistemic position of the subject in question. Second, I will argue that readers of the bank cases will fill in these features differently in the low and the high standards case. In particular, I will argue that there is a variety of reasons to think that the fact that an error-possibility is mentioned in the high standards case will lead readers to assume that this error-possibility is supposed to be likely in the high standards case. (shrink)

Many experiential properties are naturally understood as dispositions such that e.g. a cake tastes good to you iff you are disposed to get gustatory pleasure when you eat it. Such dispositional analyses, however, face a challenge. It has been widely observed that one cannot properly assert “The cake tastes good to me” unless one has tried it. This acquaintance requirement is puzzling on the dispositional account because it should be possible to be disposed to like the cake even if this (...) disposition has never been manifested. We argue that familiar response strategies on behalf of the dispositionalist fail. These include appeals to conversational implicatures, expressivism, semantic presuppositions and norms of assertion. Against this background, we propose a new analysis in terms of what we call tendencies, where a tendency is a disposition that has been manifested. The acquaintance requirement comes out as an entailment. We point out a hitherto unnoticed parallel to sentences ascribing character traits such as “Hannah is brave,” and extend our tendency-based analysis to this domain. (shrink)

According to Peirce, iconic interpretation is an associative inference on the basis of similarity. In that sense, nearly all Chinese characters are icons. The more obvious support for this claim comes from the pictorial nature of Chinese characters, which are either ‘pictographic’ or ‘indicative’. A better adjective for both is ‘ideographic’ because they share the same interpretive movement from ‘graphs’ to ‘ideas’ that are similar. There is another direction in which a graph can be turned into an icon. Apart from (...) the semantic connection to the referent, a graph is also related through convention to a particular sequence of sounds which constitute its pronunciation. This has resulted in characters that are ‘picto-phonetic’ in nature. (shrink)

It has been argued that affordances are not meaningful and are thus not useful to be applied in contexts where specifically meaningfulness of experience is at stake (e.g. clinical contexts or discussions of autonomous agency). This paper aims to reconceptualize affordances such as to make them relevant and applicable in such contexts. It starts by investigating the ‘ambiguity’ of (possibilities for) action. In both philosophy of action and affordance research, this ambiguity is typically resolved by adhering to the agents intentions (...) and concerns. I discuss some recent accounts of affordances that highlight these concerns but argue that they tend to adopt an ‘atomistic’ approach where there is no acknowledgement of how these concerns are embedded in the agents wider concerns, values, projects and commitments. An holistic approach that does acknowledge this can be found in psychological research on agents having a sense of what they’re doing. I will discuss this research in the second part of the paper and argue that agents can analogously have a sense of what is afforded. This is deemed the entry point for understanding the meaningfulness of affordances. In the final part of the paper I apply this analysis to recent attempts which seek to make sense of authentic and autonomous agency in terms of affordances. (shrink)

Business moral values are defined as the personal moral values held by individuals who are engaged in business interactions. Direct supervisors may play an important role in shaping the business moral values of their subordinates. Using 264 supervisor— subordinate dyadic data from Taiwanese organizations, the study investigated the relationships among supervisor business moral values, subordinate business moral values, subordinate organizational commitment, job performance, and attendance. The results indicated that supervisor business moral values were positively associated with subordinate business moral values, (...) and that the latter mediated the relationship between the former and subordinate outcomes. Implications for business moral values research are discussed. (shrink)

Moderate pragmatic invariantism (MPI) is a proposal to explain why our intuitions about the truth-value of knowledge claims vary with stakes and salient error-possibilities. The basic idea is that this variation is due to a variation not in the propositions expressed (as epistemic contextualists would have it) but in the propositions conversationally implicated. I will argue that MPI is mistaken: I will distinguish two kinds of implicature, namely, additive and substitutional implicatures. I will then argue, first, that the proponent of (...) MPI cannot appeal to additive implicatures because they don’t affect truth-value intuitions in the required way. Second, I will argue that the proponent of MPI cannot appeal to substitutional implicatures either because, even though they may have the required effects on truth-value intuitions, they don’t feature in the relevant cases. It follows that MPI is mistaken because whether the proponent of MPI appeals to additive or substitutional implicatures, at least one of the claims that make up her view is false. Along the way, I will suggest principles about implicatures that should be relevant not only to MPI, but to pragmatic accounts of seemingly semantic intuitions in general. (shrink)

Orthodoxy in the contemporary debate on knowledge ascriptions holds that the truth‐value of knowledge ascriptions is purely a matter of truth‐relevant factors. One familiar challenge to orthodoxy comes from intuitive practical factor effects . But practical factor effects turn out to be hard to confirm in experimental studies, and where they have been confirmed, they may seem easy to explain away. We suggest a novel experimental paradigm to show that practical factor effects exist. It trades on the idea that people (...) retract knowledge attributions when practical factors shift. We also explain why the resulting data raise a serious challenge to orthodoxy. (shrink)

Salience-sensitivity is a form of anti-intellectualism that says the following: whether a true belief amounts to knowledge depends on which error-possibilities are salient to the believer. I will investigate whether salience-sensitivity can be motivated by appeal to bank case intuitions. I will suggest that so-called third-person bank cases threaten to sever the connection between bank case intuitions and salience-sensitivity. I will go on to argue that salience-sensitivists can overcome this worry if they appeal to egocentric bias, a general tendency to (...) project our own mental states onto others. I will then suggest that a similar strategy is unavailable to stakes-sensitivists, who hold that whether a true belief amounts to knowledge depends on what is at stake for the believer. Bank case intuitions motivate salience- but not stakes-sensitivity. (shrink)

The article provides a conceptualization of self(-illness) ambiguity and investigates to what extent self(-illness) ambiguity is ‘special’. First, we draw on empirical findings to argue that self-ambiguity is a ubiquitous phenomenon. We suggest that these findings are best explained by a multidimensional account, according to which selves consist of various dimensions that mutually affect each other. On such an account, any change to any particular self-aspect may change other self-aspects and thereby alter the overall structural pattern of self-aspects, potentially leading (...) to self-ambiguity. Second, we propose that self-ambiguity comes in degrees and should be understood as a spectrum (as opposed to there being qualitative differences among instances of self-ambiguity). Third, we argue that complexity is the most useful dimension to organize cases of self-ambiguity, with mundane instances of self-ambiguity on the one end and self-illness ambiguity on the other end of the spectrum. Fourth, we address the promises and perils of narrativity with regard to self-ambiguity. Finally, we link our deflationary account of self(-illness) ambiguity to pattern theories of self. (shrink)

Giambattista Vico first published his masterpiece The New Science in 1725, but it did not receive much attention from the academic world until the middle of the twentieth century. The last fifty years of academic research have witnessed a so-called “linguistic” and “cultural” turn which has revived our interest in this great Italian thinker. Looking at the Vichian scholarship of the recent past, it seems that Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom has gained a great deal of recognition and deservedly so, (...) but his concept of sensus communis is yet to be fully appreciated. The present article thus tries to discuss the constructive and imaginative function of language and culture not just through the notion of poetic logic but also in relation to that of common sense, which hopefully can shed some light on the perennial debate over the criterion of truth and aesthetic judgement. (shrink)

It is commonly held that retraction data, if they exist, show that assessment relativism is preferable to non-indexical contextualism. I argue that this is not the case. Whether retraction data have the suggested probative force depends on substantive questions about the proper treatment of tense and location. One’s preferred account in these domains should determine whether one accepts assessment relativism or non-indexical contextualism.

Communication can be risky. Like other kinds of actions, it comes with potential costs. For instance, an utterance can be embarrassing, offensive, or downright illegal. In the face of such risks, speakers tend to act strategically and seek ‘plausible deniability’. In this paper, we propose an account of the notion of deniability at issue. On our account, deniability is an epistemic phenomenon. A speaker has deniability if she can make it epistemically irrational for her audience to reason in certain ways. (...) To avoid predictable confusion, we distinguish deniability from a practical correlate we call ‘untouchability’. Roughly, a speaker has untouchability if she can make it practically irrational for her audience to act in certain ways. These accounts shed light on the nature of strategic speech and suggest countermeasures against strategic speech. (shrink)

The mentioning of error-possibilities makes us less likely to ascribe knowledge. This paper offers a novel psychological account of this data. The account appeals to “subadditivity,” a well-known psychological tendency to judge possibilities as more likely when they are disjunctively described.

EDITOR’S ABSTRACTThe popular Chinese portrayal of the victory of Confucianism, or in Chinese terms “dismiss the hundred schools of thought and revere only the Confucian arts,” has been challenged by some scholars in the past decades. Ding’s essay illustrates not only how it has been challenged but also how the catch phrase influences the scholarly discussion. As he indicates, recent Chinese studies that attempt to subvert the traditional theory share the same “flow.” They fail to note that the expression (...) “dismiss the hundred schools of thought and revere only the Confucian arts” has had very negative connotations since it was invoked by Yi Baisha 易白沙 to harshly denounce Confucianism for being responsible for the centuries-long Chinese autocracy. (shrink)

EDITOR’S ABSTRACTThis article argues that the early Laozi text underwent three stages: The first had section divisions on the basis of the meaning. The second stage was the formative period of the Laozi text influenced by cosmological numerology; the Silk Manuscript version A is its testimony. The third stage finalized the text through the canonization of the Classic by Emperor Jing; it is represented by the Peking University Han Bamboo Slips, Yan Zun, and Liu Xiang versions and became the received (...) edition. From the Han Bamboo Slips to the Liu Xiang version, the Laozi’s two parts and section numbering became increasingly balanced and symmetric. Ding urges scholars to pay attention to all these developments when studying the Laozi text. (shrink)

Relativism entails that sentences like ‘Liquorice is tasty’ are used to assert relativistic propositions—that is, propositions whose truth-value is relative to a taste standard. I will defend this view against two objections. According to the first objection, relativism is incompatible with a Stalnakerian account of assertion. I will show that this objection fails because Stalnakerian assertions are proposals rather than attempts to update the common ground. According to the second objection, relativism problematically predicts that we can correctly assess beliefs as (...) false but faultless. I will show that it doesn't. Such assessments come out as incorrect because correct relativistic assertion requires the absence of a presupposition of non-commonality. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss what I will call “skeptical pragmatic invariantism” as a potential response to the intuitions we have about scenarios such as the so-called bank cases. SPI, very roughly, is a form of epistemic invariantism that says the following: The subject in the bank cases doesn’t know that the bank will be open. The knowledge ascription in the low standards case seems appropriate nevertheless because it has a true implicature. The goal of this paper is to (...) show that SPI is mistaken. In particular, I will show that SPI is incompatible with reasonable assumptions about how we are aware of the presence of implicatures. Such objections are not new, but extant formulations are wanting for reasons I will point out below. One may worry that refuting SPI is not a worthwhile project given that this view is an implausible minority position anyway. To respond, I will argue that, contrary to common opinion, other familiar objections to SPI fail and, thus, that SPI is a promising position to begin with. (shrink)

This study adds to the theory of family business management by exploring the effects of family ownership on the corporate misconduct of small firms in the United States. The empirical findings indicate that small family-owned firms are less likely to commit misconduct than small non-family-owned firms. We interpret this finding as family firms aiming to achieve the trans-generational succession of moral capital. Further investigation shows a nonlinear family-ownership–misconduct relationship. A negative relationship between them only appears in mature firms. We further (...) show that for relatively mature firms, only family firms with older owners are less likely to commit corporate misconduct. (shrink)

Relativism and contextualism have been suggested as candidate semantics for “knowledge” sentences. I argue that relativism faces a problem concerning the preservation of beliefs in memory. Contextualism has been argued to face a similar problem. I argue that contextualists, unlike relativists, can respond to the concern. The overall upshot is that contextualism is superior to relativism in at least one important respect.

Can affordances help in understanding psychiatric illness and psychopathological experience? In recent work on the philosophy of psychiatry and phenomenology, the answer appears to be a clear ‘yes’, but some recent worries have emerged that the affordance-concept might be “insufficiently discerning” and thus ill-suited to make sense of psychiatric illness and experience. In this paper I briefly review recent attempts to use the affordance-concept to make sense of psychopathology, as well as the worries voiced by the critics. I argue that (...) much of this criticism is, in fact, best understood as a call for more research and offer some exploratory considerations on how this research might proceed. Specifically, I argue that an improved understanding of the self-referentiality that is inherent to experiencing affordances can be useful for psychiatry. (shrink)

Many viruses evolved mechanisms for capping the 5′‐ends of their plus‐strand RNAs as a means of hijacking the eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA) splicing/translation machinery. Although capping is critical for replication, the RNAs of these viruses have other essential functions including their requirement to be packaged as either genomes or pre‐genomes into progeny viruses. Recent studies indicate that human immunodeficiency virus type‐1 (HIV‐1) RNAs are segregated between splicing/translation and packaging functions by a mechanism that involves structural sequestration of the 5′‐cap. Here, (...) we examined studies reported for other viruses and retrotransposons that require both selective packaging of their RNAs and 5′‐RNA capping for host‐mediated translation. Our findings suggest that viruses and retrotransposons have evolved multiple mechanisms to control 5′‐cap accessibility, consistent with the hypothesis that removal or sequestration of the 5′ cap enables packageable RNAs to avoid capture by the cellular RNA processing and translation machinery. (shrink)