I argue that any plausible decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences which obeys the Never Worse Principle will violate Transitivity. The Never Worse Principle says that if one option never does worse than another, you shouldn’t disprefer it. Transitivity says that if you prefer X to Y and you prefer Y to Z, then you should prefer X to Z. Violating Transitivity allows one to be money pumped. Although agents with incomplete preferences are already, in virtue of having incomplete (...) preferences, vulnerable to being money pumped, I argue that the money pump argument for Transitivity is more serious than the one for Completeness. (shrink)

This thesis is a work of experimental physics, a search for new physics with the ATLAS experiment. I post this thesis on the PhilArchive because it includes a pedagogical summary of quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics in the combination of chapters 1-2 and appendix A. This was my attempt at the end of my PhD of giving a bird's eye view of the standard model, with a thorough bibliography of the publication trail that lead to its (...) development. I find myself pointing to it at philosophy conferences. // -/- This thesis presents a review of work on the performance of the reconstruction and identification of hadronic tau decays and studies of events reconstructed with a ditau final state with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The first cut-based tau identification used with ATLAS data and the first observations of W→τν and Z→ττ at ATLAS are described, as well as many of the issues concerning the calibration and systematic uncertainties of reconstructed taus. The first measurement of the Z→ττ cross section at ATLAS with 2010 dataset is reviewed. Last, results are presented from the first search for high-mass resonances decaying to ττ at ATLAS with the 2011 dataset. (shrink)

In this chapter, we outline the methods and aims of experimental philosophy as a methodological movement within philosophy, and suggest ways in which it may be employed in the study of Chinese philosophy.

Young and colleagues . Betwixt life and death: case studies of the Cotard delusion. In P. W. Halligan & J. C. Marshall , Method in madness: Case studies in cognitive neuropsychiatry. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.) have suggested that cases of the Cotard delusion result when a particular perceptual anomaly occurs in the context of an internalising attributional style. This hypothesis has not previously been tested directly. We report here an investigation of attributional style in a 24-year-old woman with Cotard (...) delusion . LU’s attributional style was assessed using the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire . A new measure of causal locus: the internal, personal and situational attributions questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 20, 261–264.). LU showed a significantly greater proportion of internalising attributions than the control group, both overall and for negative events specifically. The results obtained thus support an association of Cotard delusion with an internalising attributional style, and are therefore consistent with the account of Young and colleagues. The potential brain basis of Cotard delusion is discussed. (shrink)

This article argues that Thomas Aquinas's virtue ethics approach to just war theory provides a solid ethical foundation for thinking about the problem of war. After briefly indicating some shortcomings of contemporary views of international justice, including pacifism, legalism, progressivism, realism, pragmatism, and consequentialism, the article examines Aquinas's question ?On War? in the Summa Theologiae. It then attempts to show that Aquinas's thinking on war is rooted in his understanding of the virtues by providing a brief overview of how the (...) cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) are connected to just war considerations. (shrink)

Explores Russell's activities as a polemicist, agitator, educator, and popularizer and discusses the evolution of his moral philosophy and its application, including his final battle against American intervention in Vietnam.

Liberal environmentalism, or green politics, intends to Dind a compromise between the prevailing global economic order and the need to protect the environment. The idea of sustainability, introduced in the Rio Summit, is the central component of international climate agreements. But on closer analysis, it can be argued that the problem of climate change is rooted in a neo-liberal system in which corporate interests collude with state policies. The free market is one of the fundamental causes of the systematic destruction (...) of the environment. Big corporations, so motivated by proDit, cannot be trusted to absorb the huge social costs of environmental degradation. For this reason, the use of indigenous wisdom is proposed to balance our way of life and environmental preservation. The study argues that climate justice would require dismantling an exploitative economic order to avert the existential threat from changing climactic patterns. (shrink)

This paper identifies experiential processes through which social structures become taken for granted, termed processes of “structure marginalization”. Passive processes of structure marginalization relegate social structures to the margin of experience without the use of higher-order cognitive acts such as evaluation and reflection. Examples include adapting to social structures via routine and habitual practices, a lack of conscious awareness of the complexity, historical formation, and other details of social structures, and rendering social structures irrelevant when they are unreflectively judged to (...) be of no value for achieving ends. Active processes of structure marginalization reflectively and discursively relegate social structures to marginal consciousness. Examples include the use of naturalistic and necessitarian explanations for the social order that implicitly justify it as inalterable or “just the way things are”, normative justifications for the status quo, and conscious awareness of one’s powerlessness to control social-structural conditions. Active processes of structure marginalization originate in passive processes. The goal of the typology is to explain, at the level of experience, why social structures typically remain unproblematic and unnoticed in everyday life, even during periods of social crisis and change or when existing structures produce harmful effects. (shrink)

According to the World Health Organization, 15% of the global population lives with some form of disability, of whom 2% to 4% experience significant difficulties in functioning. Persons with impairment are the most neglected sector in society. This inquiry looks into the social and medical model in terms of analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on persons with developmental disorder. The paper argues that the medical model is insufficient to account for the needs of persons with disability. While the (...) medical model requires that individuals with impairment should be given priority in terms of access to effective treatment, policies in the midst of public emergencies must be based on a comprehensive awareness of the social context of cognitive disability. (shrink)

To make Adorno’s difficult notion of “identity thinking” more amendable to sociological research, this project brings his Negative Dialectics into conversation with Schutz’s theory of typification. When revised with Adorno’s attention to political economy and the pathologies of reification, Schutz’s framework allows for an analysis of identity thinking in everyday life. Both theorists argue that categories of thought: automatically subsume objects for pragmatic yet socially conditioned reasons, are socially formed, transferred, and selected, and suppress particularizing characteristics of objects. Their overlapping (...) arguments are cross-fertilized to propose a critical approach to cognitive sociology that can engage in a form of ideology critique that illuminates forms of thinking that conceal social contradictions. This approach is useful for explaining the “mundane dialectic of enlightenment”: the daily reproduction of unreflective rationalization that breeds irrationality in the form of social domination and environmental harm, a contradiction which finds its ultimate expression in climate change inaction. (shrink)

Social norms are an important input for ethical decisions in any business context. However, the cross-cultural discovery of extant social norms presents a special challenge to international management because norms may be inscrutable to outsiders. This article considers the contribution of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the analysis of social norms in business ethics. It questions the origins and dynamics of norms from a sociological perspective, and identifies a tension between prescriptive efforts to make norms obligatory and positivist accounts (...) that describe norms as evolving and unstable. In the presence of dynamic and incomplete norms, managers can either deliberate with stakeholders to make norms flexible or codify norms to make them rigid. This essay argues that deliberation is the only reliable method for anticipating emergent norms. (shrink)

��In four experiments we address the question whether several visual objects can be selected voluntarily (exogenously) and then tracked in a Multiple Object Tracking paradigm and, if so, whether the selection involves a different process. Experiment 1 showed that items can indeed be selected based on their labels. Experiment 2 showed that to select the complement set to a set that is automatically (exogenously) selected — e.g. to select all objects not flashed — observers require additional time and that given (...) 1080 ms they were able to select and track them as well as those selected automatically. Experiment 3 showed that the additional time needed in the previous experiment cannot be attributed solely to time required to disengage attention from the initially automatic selections. Experiment 4 showed that the added time provides a monotonically greater benefit when there are more targets, suggesting a serial process. These results are discussed in relation to the Visual Index (FINST) theory which assumes that visual indexes are captured by a data-driven process. It is suggested that voluntarily allocated attention can be used to facilitate the automatic attention capture by objects of interest. (shrink)

The rise of populism and nationalism in the West have raised concerns about the fragility of liberal political values, chief among them tolerance. But what alternative social resources exist for cultivating the interpersonal relationships and mutual goodwill necessary for sustainable peace? And how might the lived practices of religious communities carry potential to reinterpret or re-circuit these interpersonal tensions and transform the relationship with the cultural "other" (Fremde) from "foe" (Feind) to "friend" (Freund)? This volume contributes a unique analysis of (...) this shifting discourse by viewing the contemporary socio-political upheaval through the lens of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology, with a focus on the themes of friendship, interpersonal subjectivity, and sociability as a path beyond mere tolerance. Each of the essays of the volume is written by an internationally recognized scholar in the field, and the volume examines Schleiermacher's novel reflections across multiple social contexts, including North America, Great Britain, western Europe, and South Africa. As these essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary religious communities and political discourse. (shrink)

The meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why we have problem intuitions about consciousness, why we intuitively think that conscious experience cannot be scientifically explained. In his discussion of this problem, David Chalmers briefly considers the possibility of giving a 'genealogical' solution, according to which problem intuitions are 'accidents of cultural history' (2018, p. 33). Chalmers' response to this solution is largely dismissive. In this paper, we defend the viability of a genealogical solution. Our strategy is to focus (...) on a particular problem intuition: the thought that the phenomenal character of colour experience is irreducibly subjective. We use the history of the inverted spectrum thought experiment as a window into how various philosophers have thought about colour experience. Our genealogy reveals that problem intuitions about colour are not timeless, but instead arise in a specific historical context, one that, in large part, explains why we have these intuitions. (shrink)

Theists are, according to Lovering, in an “unenviable position.” Lovering . Noting that debates on evil and God’s existence depend conceptually upon claims about what God would or would not do, he lays out three frameworks within which such claims could operate, all of which raise significant problems for theism. While his contention that these arguments depend on such claims is correct, the dire consequences for theism do not follow. After briefly discussing his three alternatives, I will argue that while (...) some of his supporting arguments are successful, his overall conclusion is not. Although both Broad Skeptical Theism and Broad Epistemic Theism are untenable, the latter has more resources than he suggests for dealing with the evidential argument from evil. More significantly, Narrow Skeptical Theism need not be ad hoc as Lovering contends, but is a position which we ought to accept provided it is not itself used as a pseudo-theodicy. The upshot of these observations is that theistic arguments may reasonably be grounded in considerations about what God would do. (shrink)

In light of research showing that climate change policy opinions and perceptions of climate change are conditioned by pre-held values, Max Scheler’s axiology, conception of ethos, and sociology of knowledge are revisited. Scheler provides a critical analysis of the values surrounding modern technology’s relation to nature, especially in his assessment of the subordination of life to utility, or, the “ethos of industrialism”. The ethos of industrialism is said to influence the modern understanding of the environment as a machine to be (...) controlled for human aims. Scheler’s phenomenological proto-environmental sociology can contribute to the environmental social sciences in three ways: articulating the axiological basis of human knowledge of the environment; offering new values to consider in future research on the social dimensions of human-nature relations; and a framework for connecting socio-ecological analysis with evaluation, specifically for evaluating different types of technologies based on their relation to the environment. (shrink)

Translation and interpretation of selected Hadith on Islamic ethics and coduct.