In the New York Times bestseller Everything All at Once, Bill Nye shows you how thinking like a nerd is the key to changing yourself and the world around you. Everyone has an inner nerd just waiting to be awakened by the right passion. In Everything All at Once, Bill Nye will help you find yours. With his call to arms, he wants you to examine every detail of the most difficult problems that look unsolvable—that is, until you (...) find the solution. Bill shows you how to develop critical thinking skills and create change, using his “everything all at once” approach that leaves no stone unturned. Whether addressing climate change, the future of our society as a whole, or personal success, or stripping away the mystery of fire walking, there are certain strategies that get results: looking at the world with relentless curiosity, being driven by a desire for a better future, and being willing to take the actions needed to make change happen. He shares how he came to create this approach—starting with his Boy Scout training (it turns out that a practical understanding of science and engineering is immensely helpful in a capsizing canoe) and moving through the lessons he learned as a full-time engineer at Boeing, a stand-up comedian, CEO of The Planetary Society, and, of course, as Bill Nye The Science Guy. This is the story of how Bill Nye became Bill Nye and how he became a champion of change and an advocate of science. It’s how he became The Science Guy. Bill teaches us that we have the power to make real change. Join him in… dare we say it… changing the world. (shrink)

In his Quadratura, Paul of Venice considers a sophism involving time and tense which appears to show that there is a valid inference which is also invalid. Consider this inference concerning some proposition A : A will signify only that everything true will be false, so A will be false. Call this inference B. A and B are the basis of an insoluble-that is, a Liar-like paradox. Like the sequence of statements in Yablo's paradox, B looks ahead to a (...) moment when A will be false, yet that moment may never come. In the Quadratura, Paul follows the solution to insolubles found in the collection of elementary treatises known as the Logica Oxoniensis, which posits an implicit assertion of its own truth in insolubles like B. However, in the treatise on insolubles in his Logica Magna, Paul develops and endorses a different solution that takes insolubles at face value. We consider how both types of solution apply to A and B : on both, B is valid. But on one, B has true premises and false conclusion, and contradictories can be false together; on the other (following the Logica Oxoniensis), the counterexample is rejected. (shrink)

This paper presents a new modal logic for ceteris paribus preferences understood in the sense of "all other things being equal". This reading goes back to the seminal work of Von Wright in the early 1960's and has returned in computer science in the 1990' s and in more abstract "dependency logics" today. We show how it differs from ceteris paribus as "all other things being normal", which is used in contexts with preference defeaters. We provide a semantic analysis and (...) several completeness theorems. We show how our system links up with Von Wright's work, and how it applies to game-theoretic solution concepts, to agenda setting in investigation, and to preference change. We finally consider its relation with infinitary modal logics. (shrink)

This paper presents a new modal logic for ceteris paribus preferences understood in the sense of “all other things being equal”. This reading goes back to the seminal work of Von Wright in the early 1960’s and has returned in computer science in the 1990’s and in more abstract “dependency logics” today. We show how it differs from ceteris paribus as “all other things being normal”, which is used in contexts with preference defeaters. We provide a semantic analysis and several (...) completeness theorems. We show how our system links up with Von Wright’s work, and how it applies to game-theoretic solution concepts, to agenda setting in investigation, and to preference change. We finally consider its relation with infinitary modal logics. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a new solution to the old paradox of nothingness. This new solution develops in two steps. The first step consists in showing how to resolve the contradiction generated by the notion of nothingness by claiming that the contradiction shows the indefinite extensibility of the concept of object. The second step consists in showing that, having accepted the idea of indefinite extensibility, we can have absolute generality without the emergence of the contradiction connected to (...) the absolute notion of nothingness. The idea of indefinite extensibility allows us to have our cake and to eat it too. (shrink)

Don't enter the world of Digital SLR without this book! If you want to use your Digital SLR camera like a pro, let a pro show you how! Sally Wiener Grotta and Daniel Grotta have been covering the world of digital photography since 1991, and this book is like a private course in DSLR mastery. From understanding the parts of your camera to using the controls effectively to shooting stunning, beautiful, and meaningful photographs to editing your images, here's everything (...) you want to know tomake your investment in a Digital SLRpay off big in gorgeous pictures. Let the experts tell you how Here's advice from the undisputed digital camera experts for less than the cost of a memory card! The Grottas help you choose the right model, get the best shots, edit like a pro, and produce showstopping prints from your DSLR. Get professional guidance on * Choosing a Digital SLR camera that fits your needs and your budget * Understanding different types of image sensors * Selecting and working with lenses * Determining the right resolution for various photo types * Using the camera's controls to fine-tune your pictures * Working with RAW format * Learning the aesthetics of what makes a great photograph * Getting great shots of action, nature, and events * Seeing how light, shadow, contrast, and color affect the mood and intention of everything you shoot * Managing your image files efficiently * Editing your images for professional results. (shrink)

Hartry Field's revised logic for the theory of truth in his new book, Saving Truth from Paradox , seeking to preserve Tarski's T-scheme, does not admit a full theory of negation. In response, Crispin Wright proposed that the negation of a proposition is the proposition saying that some proposition inconsistent with the first is true. For this to work, we have to show that this proposition is entailed by any proposition incompatible with the first, that is, that it is the (...) weakest proposition incompatible with the proposition whose negation it should be. To show that his proposal gave a full intuitionist theory of negation, Wright appealed to two principles, about incompatibility and entailment, and using them Field formulated a paradox of validity (or more precisely, of inconsistency). The medieval mathematician, theologian and logician, Thomas Bradwardine, writing in the fourteenth century, proposed a solution to the paradoxes of truth which does not require any revision of logic. The key principle behind Bradwardine's solution is a pluralist doctrine of meaning, or signification, that propositions can mean more than they explicitly say. In particular, he proposed that signification is closed under entailment. In light of this, Bradwardine revised the truth-rules, in particular, refining the T-scheme, so that a proposition is true only if everything that it signifies obtains. Thereby, he was able to show that any proposition which signifies that it itself is false, also signifies that it is true, and consequently is false and not true. I show that Bradwardine's solution is also able to deal with Field's paradox and others of a similar nature. Hence Field's logical revisions are unnecessary to save truth from paradox. (shrink)

Punk Rock Yoga Manifesto: Look, Work, Accept, Transcend. The Punk Rock Yoga style was born in 2003 and has flowed across North America and into Europe. This book articulates the style's philosophy, where you will explore the teachings of yoga through a modern lens and discover how to employ its wisdom in your daily life. You will learn about Yoga with a capital "Y"-moving beyond the poses, into the realm of personal transformation. The Punk Rock Yoga Manifesto takes a direct (...) and pragmatic approach to yoga philosophy, discussing behavioral guidelines, personal temperaments, meditation practices, energy centers, and the role of poses and breath work. This book inspires self-reflection and challenges you to look at, work on, accept, and ultimately transcend everything that restrains you from personal evolution. (shrink)

Neuroelectrical panpsychism (NP) offers a clear, simple, testable mind–body solution. It says that everything is at least minimally conscious, and electrical activity across separate neurons creates a unified, intelligent mind. NP draws on recent experimental evidence to address the easy problem of specifying the mind's neural correlates. These correlates are neuroelectrical activities that, for example, generate our different qualia, unite them to form perceptions and emotions, and help guide brain operations. NP also addresses the hard problem of why (...) minds accompany these neural correlates. Here, the real nature of matter-energy (beyond how it appears to sense organs) is consciousness that occupies space, exerts forces, and unites neuroelectrically to form minds. This doesn't reduce consciousness to observable neural activities, nor posit any radically different entities. NP also deals with panpsychism's combination problem by explaining how the mind's subject and experiences arise by electrically combining simple experiences in brains. (shrink)

In current practice, decisions regarding whether or not to resuscitate infants born at the limits of viability are generally made with expectant parents during a prenatal consultation with a neonatologist. This article reviews the current practice of prenatal consultation and describes three areas in which current practice is ethically problematic: (1) risks to competence, (2) risks to information, and (3) risks to trust. It then reviews solutions that have been suggested in the literature, and the drawbacks to each. Finally, it (...) suggests that the model of prenatal consultation be altered in three ways: (1) that the prenatal consultation be viewed as a process over time, rather than a onetime event; (2) that decision making in the prenatal consultation be framed as a choice between nonresuscitation and a trial of neonatal intensive care, rather than a choice between “doing nothing” and “doing everything”; and (3) that the prenatal consultation process devote serious attention to both the transfer of information and the non-informational needs of families, rather than focus on the transfer of information alone. (shrink)

Some novel solutions to problems in mathematics and philosophy involve employing schemas rather than quantified expressions to formulate certain propositions. Crucial to these solutions is an insistence that schematic generality is distinct from quantificational generality. Although many concede that schemas and quantified expressions function differently, the dominant view appears to be that the generality expressed by the former is ultimately reducible to the latter. In this paper, I argue against this view, which I call the 'Reductionist view'. But instead of (...) focusing on the difference between schemas and quantified expressions in formal systems, as most proponents of schemas have done, I focus on the difference between their supposed linguistic correlates, i.e., any statements and every-statements. Drawing insights from prominent accounts of the difference between these kinds of statements, I develop an alternative account. I argue that this account is not only preferable in its own right but it also supplies a response to the Reductionist view. (shrink)

A major characteristic of the aristocratic attitude—and I would not know how to better define the flavor that pervades the whole of Abhinavagupta’s work—is the downgrading of all painful effort, seen as a plebeian feature. The aristocrat intends to show that what inferior people can achieve only at the cost of long and painful exercises is accessible to him promptly and very easily. One of the recurring qualifications for Abhinavagupta’s attitude to the spiritual path is precisely absence of effort, absence (...) of exertion or fatigue, easiness. This can be clearly detected in Abhinavagupta’s attitude to yoga, or, to be more precise, to Pātañjala yoga. In the summary of the topics of the Tantrāloka, at the end of Āhnika I, he lists “uselessness of yogāṅgas.” When all yogāṅgas, abhyāsa, vairāgya, etc., are viewed from the peak of the highest aesthetically marked spiritual experiencer, they are condemned unreservedly. On the other hand, after delivering such a pitiless death sentence, Abhinavagupta seems to gracefully suspend it, and allow common people to follow pāśavayoga ‘yoga for limited souls’ in the context of the “minimal means” with the motivation that after all everything is made of everything, and, as the MVU teaches, “nothing is to be prescribed, nothing to be prohibited.”. (shrink)

Introduction -- Fallacy # 1, you can never be sure -- Fallacy # 2, "there is no truth" -- Fallacy # 3, there are no absolutes -- Fallacy # 4, there is only physical-experiential reality -- Fallacy # 5, philosophy is boring : I should know, I tried it once -- Fallacy # 6, God does not exist -- Fallacy # 7, isn't it a contradiction to say "God is good" when we see so much evil in the world, I (...) mean with so many wars, famines, plagues, and whale hunting and everything? -- Fallacy # 8, if God knows all things, even the future, then we are not free -- Fallacy # 9, if God is all-powerful can He make a "PB&J" so big he couldn't eat it in one bite? -- Fallacy # 10, man has no human nature -- Fallacy # 11, my body belongs to me! -- Fallacy # 12, the human person is a spiritual person and since spirits are neither female and male, our sexual distinctions are merely social constructs -- Fallacy # 13, I'm free to do whatever I want -- Fallacy # 14, don't force your ethics down my throat! -- Fallacy # 15, you just admitted that there is a lot of divergence of opinon as to how we should act : therefore, there can be no universally binding law to govern us -- Fallacy # 16, I know he shouldn't do that, but he's a good guy -- Fallacy # 17, if it feels good, do it -- Fallacy # 18, ...yeah, but it's my right! -- Fallacy # 19, I vas just followink orders -- Fallacy # 20, ethics are a personal matter, so what I do is my own business! -- Fallacy # 21, it doesn't matter if two consenting adults are married or not, what counts is their sincerity -- Fallacy # 22, the traditional family structure is arbitrary : actually there are many other valid expressions of this same reality -- Fallacy # 23, I learned at my university that monogamy is an out-dated social structure imposed on us by a Judeo-Christian culture! -- Fallacy # 24, no one's going to tell me how many children I going to have! -- Fallacy # 25, I can do whatever makes me happy! (shrink)

The paper explores the severity of the problem of soil erosion and a variety of approaches to the problem. The typology of approaches includes doing nothing, individual party litigation, the state's invocation of public trust doctrine, and the state's exercise of its police power. The Reinvest in Minnesota Program reflects the state's exercise of its police power and addresses the problem of soil erosion by retiring marginal land from crop production through conservation easements. Programs such as Reinvest in Minnesota also (...) reflect a certain ethic about the land. (shrink)

In this article, I will elucidate the Indian government’s two primary discourses concerning yoga since 2014 as right-wing Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu Nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, have interacted with both international and domestic audiences. These discourses can be broadly grouped into two categories, or what I refer to as Modi and the BJP’s “double discourse”: Yoga as a global soft power solution to counter the Global North’s climate change privilege on the (...) international stage and Yoga as biopower for the advancement of India’s depressed economy on the domestic front. Relying on yoga’s polyvalent character, Modi and the BJP are able to frame yoga in these two particular ways—which together signal their commitment to neoliberal economic ideology—by drawing from historical and contemporaneous precedents which I also outline in the article. I conclude with a brief visit to the preparations for the BJP’s 2019 International Day of Yoga, where this double discourse becomes most evident in the two divergent themes announced for the event. (shrink)

Demanding work-life and excessive workload, the conflict between professional and personal lives, problems with patients and those related to the occurrence of death and high risk for their own life are a few factors causing burnout, disengagement, and dissatisfaction in the professional lives of healthcare professionals. The situation worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is of utmost importance to find effective solutions to mitigate the stress and anxiety adversely affecting the mental well-being and professional lives of HCPs. This study was (...) designed to examine the efficacy of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga for alleviating work exhaustion, improving Professional Fulfillment, and influencing positivity among HCPs during COVID-19. In a comparative observation before the intervention, after the intervention, and 30 days after the intervention in the Experimental Group and Control Group, it was found that immediately after SKY, HCPs experienced a significant improvement in Professional Fulfillment, work exhaustion, positive affect, and negative affect compared to the Control Group. The effect of SKY continued until Day 30 for Professional Fulfillment and had positive and negative effects. Findings suggest that SKY elevated Professional Fulfillment among HCPs during the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced their work exhaustion and the negative effect on their mental health. SKY can aid HCPs in maintaining their well-being when faced with unprecedented challenges. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji and Myles Burnyeat have developed and defended rival interpretations of Aristotle’s account of sensation. Both agree in accepting the common terms of Aristotle’s account , but they disagree about how these terms are to be understood. In this paper I consider these rival interpretations, examining the best arguments for each and raising new objections to both. I argue that each contemporary interpretation, in its own way, faces the same problem—the inability to accommodate everything that Aristotle says in (...) his account of sensation. In the search for an alternative interpretation I suggest turning to the medieval tradition, and particularly to the interpretation developed by Aquinas in his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima. I argue that Aquinas’s interpretation deserves more attention because it retains the best features of its two contemporary rivals while avoiding the problems facing each. (shrink)

A 57–year–old with an incurable cancer suffered an abdominal catastrophe, putting him in the ICU, comatose with no chance of survival. His attending oncologist had only met him once and had no knowledge of his goals of care. Lacking an advance directive the staff turned to his family, who said, “Do everything.” This loaded statement was thought to be a demand for futile care even though it ultimately proved a reflection of their emotional response to a terrible, unanticipated event, (...) not an irrational demand for useless care. A sympathetic exploration of the patient’s goals and expectations with his family using Buckman’s SPIKES format disclosed that their major concern was that he not die on his wife’s birthday. The family agreed to withdraw him from ventilator support the following day. Unraveling a medical conflict requires a sensitive process of shared decision–making based on a transparent process of clinical reasoning that synthesizes patient and family values with medical knowledge and ethical duties. Properly done, the outcome usually is a satisfactory experience for all concerned. (shrink)

Abstract Pavel Florensky solves Lewis Carroll’s ‘Barbershop’ paradox to support his reasoning in a previous chapter. Our discussion includes a) the problem (which we also refer to as the p paradox), b) Carroll’s solution, c) Bertrand Russell’s solution, d) Florensky’s solution and then e) a material example proffered by Florensky. Both Russell and Florensky disagree with Carroll’s solution, yet, (ostensibly) unbeknownst to themselves they offer the same solution, which is ‘p implies not-q’. Given Florensky’s material (...) example, the solution seems to tell us something about the logic of belief. We ask whether Florensky’s example has reverse implications for Russell’s solution. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s11406-011-9333-6 Authors Michael Rhodes, Philosophy and Religious Studies (NPD), Chicago, IL, USA Journal Philosophia Online ISSN 1574-9274 Print ISSN 0048-3893. (shrink)

Recent health legislation in Norway significantly increases access to specialist care within a legally binding time frame. The paper describes the contents of the new legislation and introduces some of the challenges with proliferations of rights to health care. The paper describes some of the challenges associated with the proliferation of legal rights to health care. It explains the benefits of assessing the new law in the light of a rights framework. It then analyses the problematic aspects of establishing additional (...) priority rules as solutions to rights conflicts. It then defends adequacy criteria for acceptable priority rules when such rules are unavoidable. It finally defends our proposed method and explores concrete applications. (shrink)

From a rebellious young woman with a dangerous heroin habit to a globe-trotting fashion model to “First Lady of Yoga” (The New York Times), Colleen Saidman Yee tells the remarkable story of how she found herself through the healing power of yoga—and then inspired others to do the same. I’ve learned how to extract the beauty of an ordinary day. I’ve learned that the best high exists in the joy—or the sadness—of the present moment. Yoga allows me to surf the (...) ripples and sit with the mud, while catching glimpses of the clarity of my home at the bottom of the lake: my true self. The very first time Saidman Yee took a yoga class, she left feeling inexplicably different—something inside had shifted. She felt alive—so alive that yoga became the center of her life, helping her come to terms with her insecurities and find her true identity and voice. From learning to cope with a frightening seizure disorder to navigating marriages and divorces to becoming a mother, finding the right life partner, and grieving a beloved parent, Saidman Yee has been through it all—and has found that yoga holds the answers to life’s greatest challenges. Approachable, sympathetic, funny, and candid, Saidman Yee shares personal anecdotes along with her compassionate insights and practical instructions for applying yoga to everyday issues and anxieties. Specific yoga sequences accompany each chapter and address everything from hormonal mood swings to detoxing, depression, stress, and increased confidence and energy. Step-by-step instructions and photographs demonstrate her signature flow of poses so you can follow them effortlessly. Yoga for Life offers techniques to bring awareness to every part of your physical and spiritual being, allowing you to feel truly alive and to embody the peace of the present moment. (shrink)

Intentionality occurs in connectionist nets among those traits of the nets that scientists call flaws. This label has obscured for philosophers the fact that the naturalistic basis of intentionality has been discovered. I show this while staying on our profession's common ground of discourse about ancient philosophy. In the "Theaetetus", Plato invokes a homunculus to explain perceptual misrecognition, and in "On Memory and Recollection", Aristotle invokes a mental operation of disregarding in order to overcome the extraneous determinateness of mental images. (...) I develop a connectionist alternative to images that does not invoke a homunculus or spurious mental operations. I describe in detail an ultra-simple Hopfield net that provides an inus (indispensable part of a sufficient) condition for misrecognition. In addition, it exhibits properties that make it an inus condition for two marks of the intentionality of singular terms, namely, failures of existential generalization and of intersubstitutability of names. I also define the sense of a singular term. (shrink)

Solves what is sometimes, but not always, referred to as the third paradox of material implication. Readers downloading this piece should please also download the corrigendum. Note that "pragmatic" is here used in its original sense of context-sensitive, that is, adjacency. (This comment is made in response to an article in a student journal published in the western U.S. which claimed that I said that because something involves translation it must be pragmatic; that is so, in the original sense; only (...) grammaticality can ever be context-free; all meaning is context-sensitive, as "lawful" cannot meaningfully modify "whale."). (shrink)

Kripke argues that there are no genuine facts as to what words mean. The present chapter begins with a discussion of how this conclusion should be construed and proceeds to criticize the various considerations marshalled in favour of it. The central flaw is shown to be Kripke's explicit assumption that a given property of a word may provide it with a given meaning only if two interrelated conditions are satisfied: that, from the information that some word possesses the given property, (...) we may read off what it must mean, and that we can explain why this property will engender that particular meaning. It is concluded that there are, after all, perfectly genuine empirical facts of meaning. (shrink)

On the theme of “the elemental,” this paper delves into the element of water. Specifically, the paper interprets the statement inaugurating philosophy, Thales’ claim that everything is water. This is seen not as any sort of atomism and not as opposed to mythology. Instead, it is a claim expressing what the myths themselves are trying to say: there is a mystery to the presence of things, their unconcealment is bestowed on them from a hidden source. This paper shows that (...) Socrates and Heidegger make a similar claim, and so, by generalizing from these three preeminent philosophers, the basic outlook of philosophy as such crystallizes in the view that everything is water. (shrink)

A recently developed computational and neurobiological theory of phenomenal consciousness is applied to a series of persistent philosophical problems of consciousness (in recent formulations by Tye, Searle, and Chalmers). Each problem has a clear solution according to this theory, as is briefly explained here. A slightly modified version of this paper can be found as Chapter 16 ('Philosophical problems of consciousness') in my book 'The estimator theory of life and mind: how agency and consciousness can emerge', see VANTET-8 at (...) philpapers . (shrink)

This paper considers a paradox which the historian of anthropology George Stocking draws attention to: from the point of view of parts of the Victorian middle class, Victorian society was highly evolved yet also contained savage components. I clarify the paradox and propose a solution.

On its intended interpretation, logical, mathematical and metaphysical discourse sometimes seems to involve absolutely unrestricted quantification. Yet our standard semantic theories do not allow for interpretations of a language as expressing absolute generality. A prominent strategy for defending absolute generality, influentially proposed by Timothy Williamson in his paper ‘Everything’, avails itself of a hierarchy of quantifiers of ever increasing orders to develop non-standard semantic theories that do provide for such interpretations. However, as emphasized by Øystein Linnebo and Agustín Rayo, (...) there is pressure on this view to extend the quantificational hierarchy beyond the finite level, and, relatedly, to allow for a cumulative conception of the hierarchy. In his recent book, Modal Logic as Metaphysics, Williamson yields to that pressure. I show that the emerging cumulative higher-orderist theory has implications of a strongly generality-relativist flavour, and consequently undermines much of the spirit of generality absolutism that Williamson set out to defend. (shrink)

English translation of a paper intially publisdhed in French in Dialogue under the title 'Une solution pour le paradoxe de Goodman'. In the classical version of Goodman's paradox, the universe where the problem takes place is ambiguous. The conditions of induction being accurately described, I define then a framework of n-universes, allowing the distinction, among the criteria of a given n-universe, between constants and variables. Within this framework, I distinguish between two versions of the problem, respectively taking place: (i) (...) in an n-universe the variables of which are colour and time; (ii) in an n-universe the variables of which are colour, time and space. Finally, I show that each of these versions admits a specific resolution. (shrink)

For me, belief is not an all-or-nothing thing—believe or disbelieve, accept or reject. Instead, I have degrees of belief, a subjective probability distribution over different possible ways the world could be. This means I am constantly changing my mind about all sorts of things, as I reflect or gain more evidence. While I don’t always think explicitly in terms of probabilities, I often do so when I give careful consideration to some matter. And when I reflect on my own cognitive (...) processes, I must acknowledge the graduated nature of my beliefs. (shrink)

There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously assert a ‘must’-claim versus those in which one can use the corresponding non-modal claim. But it is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is even harder to account for this difference, since assertions of 'Must ϕ' and assertions of ϕ alone seem to have the same basic goal: namely, coming to agreement that [[ϕ]] is true. In this paper I take on this (...) puzzle, known as Karttunen’s Problem. I begin by arguing that a ‘must’-claim is felicitous only if there is a shared argument for its prejacent. I then argue that this generalization, which I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that ‘must’-claims are felicitous only if the speaker’s evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I sketch a pragmatic derivation of Support. (shrink)

This paper provides a new approach to a family of outstanding logical and semantical puzzles, the most famous being Frege's puzzle. The three main reductionist theories of propositions (the possible-worlds theory, the propositional-function theory, the propositional-complex theory) are shown to be vulnerable to Benacerraf-style problems, difficulties involving modality, and other problems. The nonreductionist algebraic theory avoids these problems and allows us to identify the elusive nondescriptive, non-metalinguistic, necessary propositions responsible for the indicated family of puzzles. The algebraic approach is also (...) used to defend antiexistentialism against existentialist prejudices. The paper closes with a suggestion about how this theory of content might enable us to give purely semantic (as opposed to pragmatic) solutions to the puzzles based on a novel formulation of the principle of compositionality. (shrink)

There are certain metaphysically interesting arguments ‘from vagueness’, for unrestricted mereological composition and for four-dimensionalism, which involve a claim to the effect that idioms for unrestricted quantification are precise. An elaboration of Lewis’ argument for this claim, which assumes the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, is presented. It is argued that the argument also works according to other views on the nature of vagueness, which also require for an expression to be vague that there are different admissible alternatives of (...) the relevant sort, such as epistemicism, as defended by Williamson. Recent attempts to resist the argument are discussed and rejected. (shrink)

There are certain metaphysically interesting arguments ‘from vagueness’, for unrestricted mereological composition and for four‐dimensionalism, which involve a claim to the effect that idioms for unrestricted quantification are precise. An elaboration of Lewis’ argument for this claim, which assumes the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, is presented. It is argued that the argument also works according to other views on the nature of vagueness, which also require for an expression to be vague that there are different admissible alternatives of (...) the relevant sort, such as epistemicism, as defended by Williamson. Recent attempts to resist the argument are discussed and rejected. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with anti-realist views that eschew objectivity. Minimally, objectivity maintains that an objective gap between what is the case and what we take to be the case exists. Some prominent feminist philosophers and theorists endorse anti-realism that rejects such a gap. My contention is that this is bad news for political movements like feminism since this sort of anti-realism fosters radical relativism; feminists, then, must retain a commitment to objectivity. However, some anti-realist feminists, who take truth to (...) be a social construct that depends on one’s perspective or conceptual scheme (like Catherine MacKinnon), don’t intend to argue for relativism. This being so, the paper will explore whether there is something to be said for feminist anti-realism. In particular, I will explore whether Hilary Putnam’s ‘internal realism’ can help block relativism that anti-realist feminism appears to generate. Nonetheless, I will conclude that ‘internal realism’ cannot undercut relativism that threatens anti-realist feminism. (shrink)

The voice for all animals and people dedicated to a sustainable future for all species.

Prior's puzzle is a puzzle about the substitution of certain putatively synonymous or coreferential expressions in sentences. Prior's puzzle is important, because a satisfactory solution to it should constitute a crucial part of an adequate semantic theory for both proposition-embedding expressions and attitudinal verbs. I argue that two recent solutions to this puzzle are unsatisfactory. They either focus on the meaning of attitudinal verbs or content nouns. I propose a solution relying on a recent analysis of that-clauses in (...) linguistics. Our solution is superior, as it not only avoids the problems faced by previous solutions, but it also brings developments in linguistics in line to solve an old puzzle in philosophy. (shrink)

Charles Chihara has presented a problem he claims Bayesian confirmation theory cannot handle. Chihara gives examples in which he claims the change in belief cannot be construced as conditionalizing on new evidence. These are situations in which the agent suddenly thinks of new possibilities. I propose a solution that incorporates the important ideas of Bayesian theory. In particular, I present a principle which shows that the change of belief in Chihara's example is due to simple conditionalization.

Giacomo Leopardi, a major Italian poet of the nineteenth century, was also an expert in evil to whom Schopenhauer referred as a “spiritual brother.” Leopardi wrote: “Everything is evil. That is to say, everything that is, is evil; that each thing exists is an evil; each thing exists only for an evil end; existence is an evil.” These and other thoughts are collected in the Zibaldone, a massive collage of heterogeneous writings published posthumously. Leopardi’s pessimism assumes a polished (...) form in his literary writings, such as Dialogue between Nature and an Islander (1824)—an invective against nature and the suffering of creatures within it. In his last lyric, Broom, or the flower of the desert (1836), Leopardi points to the redeeming power of poetry and to human solidarity as placing at least temporary limits on the scope of evil. (shrink)

This paper is about the ‘threshold problem’ for knowledge, namely, how do we determine what fixes the level of justification required for knowledge in a non-arbitrary way? One popular strategy for solving this problem is impurism, which is the view that the required level of justification is partly fixed by one’s practical reasoning situation. However, this strategy has been the target of several recent objections. My goal is to propose a new version of impurism that solves the threshold problem without (...) succumbing to these criticisms. (shrink)

On reading the last sentence, did you interpret me as saying falsely that everything — everything in the entire universe — was packed into my carry-on baggage? Probably not. In ordinary language, ‘everything’ and other quantifiers (‘something’, ‘nothing’, ‘every dog’, ...) often carry a tacit restriction to a domain of contextually relevant objects, such as the things that I need to take with me on my journey. Thus a sentence of the form ‘Everything Fs’ is true (...) as uttered in a context C if and only if everything that is relevant in C satisfies the predicate ‘F’; ‘everything’ ranges just over the contextually relevant things. Such generality is restricted in a context-relative way. (shrink)

More than 40 primary studies, and three recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses, have shown a clear association between pharmaceutical industry funding of clinical trials and pro-industry results. Industry sponsorship biases published scientific research in favour of the sponsors, a result of the strong interest commercial sponsors have in obtaining favourable results.Three proposed remedies to this problem are widely agreed upon among those concerned with the level of sponsorship bias: financial disclosure, reporting standards and trial registries. This paper argues that all (...) of these remedies either fail to address the mechanisms by which pharmaceutical companies’ sponsorship leads to biased results—design bias, multiple trials with predictable outcomes, fraud, rhetorical effects and publication bias—or else only inadequately address those mechanisms. As a result, the policies normally proposed for dealing with sponsorship bias are unable to eliminate it. Only completely separating public clinical research from pharmaceutical industry funding can eliminate sponsorship bias. (shrink)