I defend the theory that one's life is meaningful to the extent that one promotes the good. Call this the good cause account (GCA) of the meaning of life. It holds that the good effects that count towards the meaning of one's life need not be intentional. Nor must one be aware of the effects. Nor does it matter whether the same good would have resulted if one had not existed. What matters is that one is causally responsible for the (...) good. I argue that the best theory of the meaning of life should clearly distinguish between subjective fulfillment and objective meaningfulness. The GCA respects the distinction. And it is superior to its leading rivals in the recent literature, most notably those of Erik Wielenberg and Susan Wolf. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

The thesis that aesthetic testimony cannot provide aesthetic justification or knowledge is widely accepted--even by realists about aesthetic properties and values. This Kantian position is mistaken. Some testimony about beauty and artistic value can provide a degree of aesthetic justification and, perhaps, even knowledge. That is, there are cases in which one can be justified in making an aesthetic judgment purely on the basis of someone else's testimony. But widespread aesthetic unreliability creates a problem for much aesthetic testimony. Hence, most (...) testimony about art does not have much epistemic value. The situation is somewhat different with respect to aesthetic testimony about nature, proofs, and theories. (shrink)

Abstract: Philosophers interested in Kant's relevance to contemporary debates over the nature of mental content—notably Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais—have argued that Kant ought to be credited with being the original proponent of the existence of ‘nonconceptual content’. However, I think the ‘nonconceptualist’ interpretations that Hanna and Allais give do not show that Kant allowed for nonconceptual content as they construe it. I argue, on the basis of an analysis of certain sections of the A and B editions of the (...) Transcendental Deduction, for a ‘conceptualist’ reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. My contention is that since Kant's notion of empirical intuition makes essential reference to the categories, it must be true for him that no empirical intuition can be given in sensibility independently of the understanding and its categories. (shrink)

Neo-Cartesian approaches to belief place greater evidential weight on a subject's introspective judgments than do neo-behaviorist accounts. As a result, the two views differ on whether our absent-minded and weak-willed actions are guided by belief. I argue that simulationist accounts of the concept of belief are committed to neo-Cartesianism, and, though the conceptual and empirical issues that arise are inextricably intertwined, I discuss experimental results that should point theory-theorists in that direction as well. Belief is even less closely connected to (...) behaviour than most contemporary functionalists allow. (shrink)

While there are many issues to be raised in using lethal autonomous robotic weapons (beyond those of remotely operated drones), we argue that the most important question is: should the decision to take a human life be relinquished to a machine? This question is often overlooked in favor of technical questions of sensor capability, operational questions of chain of command, or legal questions of sovereign borders. We further argue that the answer must be ?no? and offer several reasons for banning (...) autonomous robots. (1) Such a robot treats a human as an object, instead of as a person with inherent dignity. (2) A machine can only mimic moral actions, it cannot be moral. (3) A machine run by a program has no human emotions, no feelings about the seriousness of killing a human. (4) Using such a robot would be a violation of military honor. We therefore conclude that the use of an autonomous robot in lethal operations should be banned. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has argued that a person S ’s total evidence is constituted solely by propositions that S knows. This theory of evidence entails that a false belief can not be a part of S ’s evidence base for a conclusion. I argue by counterexample that this thesis (E = K for now) forces an implausible separation between what it means for a belief to be justified and rational from one’s perspective and what it means to base one’s beliefs on (...) the evidence. Furthermore, I argue that E = K entails the implausible result that there are cases in which a well-evidenced belief necessarily can not serve as evidence for a further proposition. (shrink)

In this third edition of "John Locke", the text is divided into three parts. The first is biographical, giving an account of the development of Locke's mind. The second expounds the teaching of the "Essay", and relates this to its background; while the third deals with Locke's teaching in political theory, moral philosophy, education, and religion. -- From publisher's description.

The American conservative movement is a force of anti-reflexivity insofar as it attacks two key elements of reflexive modernization: the environmental movement and environmental impact science. Learning from its mistakes in overtly attacking environmental regulations in the early 1980s, this counter-movement has subsequently exercised a more subtle form of power characterized by non-decision-making. We examine the conservative movement’s efforts to undermine climate science and policy in the USA over the last two decades by using this second dimension of power. The (...) conservative movement has employed four non-decision-making techniques to challenge the legitimacy of climate science and prevent progress in policy-making. We argue that reflexive modernization scholars should focus more attention on similar forces of anti-reflexivity that continue to shape the overall direction of our social, political and economic order, and the life chances of many citizens. Indeed, better understanding of the forces and effectiveness of anti-reflexivity may very well be crucial for societal resilience and adaptation, especially in the face of global environmental problems like climate change. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one to refine the methodology used to describe polarization in distributions of attitudes. Each distinct concept is explained through a definition, formal measures, examples, and references. We then apply these measures to GSS data regarding political views, opinions on abortion, and religiosity—topics described as revealing social polarization. Previous breakdowns of polarization include domain-specific assumptions and focus on a subset of the distribution’s features. This has conflated multiple, (...) independent features of attitude distributions. The current work aims to extract the distinct senses of polarization and demonstrate that by becoming clearer on these distinctions we can better focus our efforts on substantive issues in social phenomena. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, skepticism about political and moral experts has grown into a serious social problem, undermining the functioning of liberal democratic regimes. Indeed, meritocracy-that is, government by hard working, public-spirited people with high levels of relevant expertise-has never looked so promising as an alternative to the dangers of know-nothing populism. One cultural tradition has devoted sustained attention to the idea of meritocracy, as well as to the cultivation of true expertise or mastery: Confucianism. Mastery, Dependence, and the (...) Ethics of Authority presents a compelling analysis of expertise and authority, and examines classical Confucian conceptions of mastery, dependence, and human relationships in order to suggest new approaches to these issues in ethics and political theory. Contemporary Westerners are heirs to multiple traditions that are suspicious of authority, especially coercive political authority. We are also increasingly wary of dependence, which now often seems to signify weakness, neediness, and pathology. Analysts commonly presume that both authority and dependence threaten human autonomy, and are thus intrinsically problematic. But these judgments are mistaken. Our capacity for autonomy needs to be cultivated over time through deliberate practices of training, in which we depend on the guidance of virtuous and skilled teachers. Confucian thought provides a subtle and powerful analysis of one version of this training process, and of the social supports such an education in autonomy requires-as well as the social value of having virtuous and skilled leaders. Early Confucians also argue that human life is marked by numerous interacting forms of dependence, which are not only ineradicable, but in many ways good. On a Confucian view, it is natural, healthy, and good for people to be deeply dependent on others in a variety of ways across the full human lifespan. They teach us that individual autonomy only develops within a social matrix, structured by relationships of mutual dependence that can either help or hinder it, including a variety of authority relations. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently defended Causal Essentialism—the view that every property confers causal powers, and whatever powers it confers, it confers essentially. I argue that on the face of it, Causal Essentialism implies a form of Monism, and in particular, the thesis I call ‘Mereological Monism’: that there is some concretum that is a part of every concretum. However, there are three escape routes, three views which are such that if one of them is true, Causal Essentialism does not imply (...) any form of Monism at all. I survey the costs associated with taking these escape routes along with the costs associated with accepting Mereological Monism. (shrink)

Photographs furnish evidence. This is true in both formal and informal contexts. The use of photographs as legal evidence goes back to the very earliest days of photography, and they have been used in American trials since around the time of the Civil War. Photographs may also serve as historical evidence (for example, about the Civil War). And they serve in informal contexts as evidence about all sorts of things, such as what we and our loved ones looked like in (...) the past. (shrink)

The work of Hussefl and Freud had common sources in the philosophy, psychology and physiology of the nineteenth century. Herbart, Brentano, Helmholtz, Fechner, Wundt and Mach were among the towering figures in their common background who had influence on their respective work. 1 Although contemporaries who had little concern for the other's professional interest, Husserl and Freud nevertheless struggled with some common problems. One of these is the relationship of sensation to memory and to the experience of time. The concepts (...) of sensation, memory and time were, in fact, artifacts which the empirical methods of nerve-physiology, the psychophysical testing of sensory thresholds, as well as the metaphysics and positivism of the late nineteenth century had left them. (shrink)

Is the procreation asymmetry intuitively supported? According to a recent article in this journal, an experimental study suggests the opposite. Dean Spears (2020) claims that nearly three-quarters of participants report that there is a reason to create a person just because that person’s life would be happy. In reply, I argue that various confounding factors render the study internally invalid. More generally, I show how one might come to adopt the procreation asymmetry for the wrong reasons by misinterpreting one’s intuitions.

There are passages in Nietzsche that can be read as contributions to the free will/determinism debate. When read in that way, they reveal a fairly amateurish metaphysician with little of real substance or novelty to contribute; and if these readings were apt or perspicuous, it seems to me, they would show that Nietzsche's thoughts about freedom were barely worth pausing over. They would simply confirm the impression—amply bolstered from other quarters—that Nietzsche was not at his best when addressing the staple (...) questions of philosophy. But these readings sell Nietzsche short. He had next to no systematic interest in metaphysics, and his concern with the question of freedom was not motivated by metaphysical considerations. Rather—and as with all of Nietzsche's concerns—his motivations were ethical. He was interested, not in the relation of the human will to the causal order of nature, but in the relation between freedom and the good life, between the will and exemplary human living. Read from this perspective, Nietzsche's remarks about freedom actually add up to something. And what they add up to is one aspect of his attempt to understand life after the model of art. Beauty, for Kant, was an image of the moral.1 For Nietzsche, by contrast—and the contrast can be hard to spell out—art was an image of the ethical.2 My hope here is to begin to explain why Nietzsche might have thought that the issue of freedom was relevant to that. In sections 1–3, I attempt to show why Nietzsche is not best read as a participant in the standard free will/determinism debate; in sections 4–6, I try to spell out the ethical conception of freedom that he develops instead. (shrink)

Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. He also claims, however, that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self-contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of this paper, by contrast, is that, despite appearances, there is no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche's two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness emerges as integral to our capacity to (...) become self-creators. The paper also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche's doctrine of amor fati that actually – and perhaps uniquely – makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers endorse the Humean-Lewisian Denial of Absolutely Necessary Connections (‘DANC’). Among those philosophers, many deny all or part of the Humean-Lewisian package of views about causation and laws. I argue that they maintain an inconsistent set of views. DANC entails that (1) causal properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, (2) nomic properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, and (3) causal and nomic properties (...) and relations globally supervene on non-causal, non-nomic properties and relations. Hence, one can’t be a consistent Half-Hearted Humean. Consistency demands giving up the core Humean thesis or facing up to its consequences. The upshot is that we face a stark choice: either there are absolutely necessary connections between distinct existents or it’s "just one damn thing after another.". (shrink)

Investments in mitigating climate change have their greatest environmental impact over the long term. As a consequence the incentives to invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions today appear to be weak. In response to this challenge, there has been increasing attention given to the idea that current generations can be motivated to start financing mitigation at much higher levels today by shifting these costs to the future through national debt. Shifting costs to the future in this way benefits future generations (...) by break- ing existing patterns of delaying large-scale investment in low-carbon energy and efficiency. As we will see in this chapter, it does appear to be technically feasible to transfer the costs of investments made today to the future in such a way that people alive today do not incur any net cost. the aim of this chapter is to take seriously the possibility that climate change has produced an extremely intractable political problem and that we must now consider strong measures that can break existing patterns of delaying mitigation. I defend the claim that if climate change involves a stark conflict of interests between current and future generations, then borrowing from the future would be both strategically and normatively much better than the status quo. Nevertheless, I challenge the borrowing from the future proposal on the grounds that it is not in fact the powerful tool for motivating existing agents that its proponents imagine it to be. The purpose of developing this critical argument is not, however, simply to throw doubt onto the idea of borrowing from the future. If we really do find ourselves in a political context where the prospects for effective action are very poor then strategic forms of buck-passing may make an important positive contribution to avoiding dangerous global cli- mate change. Consequently, if debt financing is not as powerful of a motivational tool as imagined we still have strong reasons, I will argue, to identify other strategies that will change agents’ incentive structures. To this end, I propose an alternative form of passing on the costs of mitigation to the future that warrants consideration. (shrink)

Here we focus on two questions: What is the proper semantics for deontic modal expressions in English? And what is the connection between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons? Our contribution towards thinking about the first, which makes up the bulk of our paper, considers a representative sample of recent challenges to a Kratzer-style formal semantics for modal expressions, as well as the rival views—Fabrizio Cariani’s contrastivism, John MacFarlane’s relativism, and Mark Schroeder’s ambiguity theory—those challenges are thought to motivate. (...) These include the Professor Procrastinate challenge to Inheritance (the principle that ‘If ought p and p entails q, then ought q), as well as Parfit’s miners puzzle regarding information-sensitive deontic modals. Here we argue that a Kratzer-style view is able to meet all of the challenges we’ll consider. In addition, we’ll identify challenges for each of those rival views. Our overall conclusion is that a Kratzer-style semantics remains the one to beat. With this assumption in place, we then ask how we should understand the relationship between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons. Should, for example, we hold that the truth of such a statement entails the existence of a normative reason for some agent to comply? Here we argue that, in many cases, acceptance of Kratzer’s semantics for deontic modals leaves open for substantive normative theorizing the question of whether an agent has a normative reason to comply with what she ought to do. (shrink)

I examine Du Châtelet’s methodology for physics and metaphysics through the lens of her engagement with Newton’s Rules for Reasoning in Natural Philosophy. I first show that her early manuscript writings discuss and endorse these Rules. Then, I argue that her famous published account of hypotheses continues to invoke close analogues of Rules 3 and 4, despite various developments in her position. Once relevant experimental evidence and some basic constraints are met, it is legitimate to inductively generalize from observations; general (...) hypotheses can thereafter be assumed as true until contrary experiments show otherwise. I conclude by arguing that this account of induction plays an essential role in her metaphysics, both in an argument for simple substances—which has an inductive premise—and in her attempt to distinguish acceptable and unacceptable metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

Adam Smith sought to explain the persistence of slavery as an institution in Wealth of Nations and Lectures on Jurispridence. In order to accomplish this he also drew on arguments he had developed in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The result was a sophisticated explanation which bridged economic, psychological, and moral considerations. After presenting Smith’s explanation I will consider a discussion of the moral wrong of slavery in Ottobah Cugoano, the author of the incisive criticism of the slave trade Thoughts (...) and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787). I will suggest that Cugoano’s account of what is morally wrong in slavery shows an important lacuna in Smith‘s views. (shrink)

Hope is a ubiquitous feature of human experience, but there has been relatively little scholarship within contemporary analytic philosophy devoted to the systematic analysis of its nature and value. In the last decade, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of hope and, in particular, its role in human agency. This scholarly attention reflects an ambivalence about hope's effects. While the possession of hope can have salutary consequences, it can also make the agent vulnerable to certain (...) kinds of personal risk. The pervasiveness of hope is not a sign of its quality; only a well‐tuned hope can be a virtue. Recently, Nancy Snow has argued that hope can be an intellectual virtue. Framing her account as a contribution to regulative epistemology, she contends that the intellectual virtue of hope can (i) motivate the pursuit of important epistemic ends, (ii) create dispositions that enable the successful pursuit of these aims, and (iii) generate a method for enduring intellectual projects. In this paper, I provide a critical appraisal of Snow's account of hope as an intellectual virtue. One important implication of this critique is that hope can function as an intellectual virtue only to the extent that it has benefitted from the correcting and perfecting influence of other cognitive excellences. (shrink)

As sharing and secondary research use of biospecimens increases, IRBs and researchers face the challenge of protecting and respecting donors without comprehensive regulations addressing the human subject protection issues posed by biobanking. Variation in IRB biobanking policies about these issues has not been well documented.

Global metaphysical skepticism is the view that we have no knowledge of any substantive metaphysical thesis. Various reasons have been provided in support of global metaphysical skepticism. I provide a new one. The reason, very roughly, is this. Metaphysical theses come together as packages. Such packages are very different from each other. Because the packages are so different, we cannot know of any one of the packages that it isn't true. And because we cannot know of any one of them (...) that it isn't true, we cannot know any substantive metaphysical thesis at all. My paper makes this argument much more precise and defends each of the premises in detail. (shrink)

This essay outlines an account of virtue ethics applied to the profession of journalism. Virtue ethics emphasizes character before consequences, requires the "good" prior to the "right," and allows for agent-relative as well as agent-neutral values. This essay offers an exploration of the internal characteristics of a good journalist by focusing on moral virtues crucial to journalism. First, the essay outlines the general tenets of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Second, it offers arguments touting virtue ethics in comparison with other popular normative (...) theories such as Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's deontology. Finally, an original account of journalistic virtue ethics is offered, with an emphasis on the virtues of justice and integrity. (shrink)

Classic inductive skepticism–the epistemological claim that we have no good reason to believe that the unobserved resembles the observed–is plausibly everyone’s lot, whether or not they embrace Hume’s metaphysical claim that distinct existents are “entirely loose and separate”. But contemporary advocates of a Humean metaphysic accept a metaphysical claim stronger than Hume’s own. I argue that their view plausibly gives rise to a radical inductive skepticism–according to which we are downright irrational in believing as we do about the unobserved–that we (...) don’t otherwise have reason to accept. The Metaphysical Neo-Humean is in an epistemological quagmire all her own. (shrink)

The coupling-constitution fallacy claims that arguments for extended cognition involve the inference of “x and y constitute z” from “x is coupled to y” and that such inferences are fallacious. We argue that the coupling-constitution fallacy fails in its goal to undermine the hypothesis of extended cognition: appeal to the coupling-constitution fallacy to rule out possible empirical counterexamples to intracranialism is fallacious. We demonstrate that appeals to coupling-constitution worries are problematic by constructing the fallacious argument against the hypothesis of extended (...) cognition. We consider several objections to our argument and find them insufficient to rebut our conclusion. (shrink)

Propositional attitude verbs, such as think and want, have long held interest for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the granularity with which these verbs’ semantic and pragmatic properties are recoverable from their syntactic distributions, using three behavioral experiments aimed at explicitly quantifying the relationship between these two sets of properties. Experiment 1 gathers a measure of 30 (...) propositional attitude verbs’ syntactic distributions using an acceptability judgment task. Experiments 2a and 2b gather measures of semantic similarity between those same verbs using a generalized semantic discrimination task and an ordinal scale task, respectively. Two kinds of analyses are conducted on the data from these experiments. The first compares both the acceptability judgments and the semantic similarity judgments to previous classifications derived from the syntax and semantics literature. The second kind compares the acceptability judgments to the semantic similarity judgments directly. Through these comparisons, we show that there is quite fine-grained information about propositional attitude verbs’ semantics carried in their syntactic distributions—whether one considers the sorts of discrete qualitative classifications that linguists traditionally work with or the sorts of continuous quantitative classifications that can be derived experimentally. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the incompatibility of three claims, each of them quite attractive to a theist. First, the doctrine of deep dependence: the universe depends for its existence, in a non-causal way, on God. Second, the doctrine of true transcendence: the universe is wholly distinct from God; God is separate and apart from the universe in respect of mereology, modes, and mentality. Third, the doctrine of robust creaturely freedom: some creature performs some act such that he could (...) have done other than he in fact did. After laying out the claims, I show that their conjunction has its adherents—most clearly, the medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides. I then argue in detail that the claims are in fact incompatible. I conclude with a discussion of which of the claims is best jettisoned, drawing in part on the work of the Absolute Idealist, Mary Calkins. (shrink)

Crowdfunded microfinance provides financial resources to impoverished entrepreneurs across the globe based on online appeals describing the entrepreneur’s values and venture potential and is considered a key player in the ethical finance movement. Despite knowledge that the content of the appeals impacts funding success, little is known regarding the role of religious expression, which is common and consequential in socially-oriented contexts. We leverage role congruity theory to address a theoretical tension concerning the effects of religious expression on crowdfunded microfinance funding (...) outcomes. Religious expression is associated with perceptions of trustworthiness, rule-following, and ethicality—qualities that would suggest an entrepreneur would likely avoid opportunist behavior and repay the loan. However, appeals to a higher power may be incongruent with the role of an entrepreneur to the extent that such expression communicates a lack of proactiveness and self-reliance. We use a two-study design to help resolve this tension. Our field study incorporating 253,130 loans from Kiva reveals that religious expression negatively influences funding, particularly for women. Our experiment using 1,795 individual loan assessments shows that the negative influence of religious expression is attenuated when individual lenders exhibit higher levels of religiosity. Post hoc analysis suggests campaigns can mitigate the negative impact of religious expression by being careful to also include aspects highlighting an entrepreneurial orientation. Overall, our work extends prior research suggesting that language tied to ethical or virtuous behaviors is generally not rewarded by lenders as using such language may make the applicant appear inconsistent with role of a stereotypical entrepreneur. (shrink)

Berys Gaut has recently articulated and defended a putatively anti-definitional ‘cluster’ theory of art. In the first part of this paper, I argue that Gaut's version of the cluster account is flawed. The key notion of ‘counting toward the application of a concept’ is formulated in such a way that a range of apparently irrelevant properties will count as criterial for the concept of art. Moreover, there does not appear to be any quick fix to this problem. I then turn (...) to an exploration of the relationship between the cluster theory and the possibility of defining art. Gaut has claimed that the truth of the cluster account would provide an independent basis for rejecting the possibility of an adequate definition of art. I argue that this is not the case. But while the truth of the cluster account is consistent with definition, I also argue that it would not entail the definability of art in any ordinary sense. (shrink)

Comparative religious ethics is a complicated scholarly endeavor, striving to harmonize intellectual goals that are frequently conceived as quite different, or even intrinsically opposed. Against commonly voiced suspicions of comparative work, this essay argues that descriptive, comparative, and normative interests may support rather than conflict with each other, depending on the comparison in question, and how it is pursued. On the basis of a brief comparison of the early Christian Augustine of Hippo and the early Confucians Mencius and Xunzi on (...) the topic of "human nature," this paper advocates a particular account of comparative religious ethics, and argues for the complexity of the idea of "human nature." Different elements of this family of concerns are central to religious ethics generally, and to theories and practices of moral development and personal formation specifically. (shrink)

The most interesting and perilous issue at present in comparative religious ethics is comparative ethical judgment—when and how to judge others, if at all. There are understandable historical and conceptual reasons for the current tendency to prefer descriptive over normative work in comparative religious ethics. However, judging those we study is inescapable—it can be suppressed or marginalized but not eliminated. Therefore, the real question is how to judge others (and ourselves) well, not whether to judge. Instead of bringing supposedly universal (...) moral scoring systems to bear on reified "traditions" and "cultures," it would be better to focus on the precise details of particular practices, motifs, and theories in various settings, and compare them with an eye to substantive issues of current ethical concern. (shrink)

Patent landscaping is the process of finding patents related to a particular topic. It is important for companies, investors, governments, and academics seeking to gauge innovation and assess risk. However, there is no broadly recognized best approach to landscaping. Frequently, patent landscaping is a bespoke human-driven process that relies heavily on complex queries over bibliographic patent databases. In this paper, we present Automated Patent Landscaping, an approach that jointly leverages human domain expertise, heuristics based on patent metadata, and machine learning (...) to generate high-quality patent landscapes with minimal effort. In particular, this paper describes a flexible automated methodology to construct a patent landscape for a topic based on an initial seed set of patents. This approach takes human-selected seed patents that are representative of a topic, such as operating systems, and uses structure inherent in patent data such as references and class codes to “expand” the seed set to a set of “probably-related” patents and anti-seed “probably-unrelated” patents. The expanded set of patents is then pruned with a semi-supervised machine learning model trained on seed and anti-seed patents. This removes patents from the expanded set that are unrelated to the topic and ensures a comprehensive and accurate landscape. (shrink)

For Kant, inquiry into nature properly requires seeking to explain all material wholes merely mechanically, in terms of their parts. There is no consensus on how he justifies this Principle of Mechanism. I argue that Kant seeks to derive this claim about part and wholes neither from his laws or mechanics, nor from the mere discursivity of our understanding (two standard options in the literature), but instead from a priori principles laid out in the first Critique, which govern parts, wholes, (...) and magnitudes. These principles are also fundamental to Kant’s account of mathematics. Therefore, Kant’s Principle of Mechanism and his philosophy of mathematics have common foundations. (shrink)

The expansion of extractive corporations’ overseas business operations has led to serious concerns regarding human rights–related impacts. As theseapprehensions grow, we see a countervailing rise in calls for government intervention and in levels of socially conscious shareholder advocacy. I focus on the latter as manifested in recent use of the shareholder proposal mechanism found in corporate law. Shareholder proposals, while under-theorized, provide a valuable lens through which to consider the argument that economic behaviour is embedded within social relations. In doing (...) so, I situate my analysis within Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship. Elsewhere, I have supported the use of corporate law tools in advancing the international human rights enterprise and argued that investment activism can be an essential component of this advancement. This paper represents a reflexive pause. Using the case study of a recent proposal submitted to Goldcorp Inc., I seek to problematize the shareholder proposal as a human rights advocacy tool and to examine it as a site of contestation. (shrink)

This paper charts P.A.M. Dirac’s development of his theory of the electron, and its radical picture of empty space as an almost-full plenum. Dirac’s Quantum Electrodynamics famously accomplished more than the unification of special relativity and quantum mechanics. It also accounted for the ‘duplexity phenomena’ of spectral line splitting that we now attribute to electron spin. But the extra mathematical terms that allowed for spin were not alone, and this paper charts Dirac’s struggle to ignore or account for them as (...) a sea of strange, negative-energy, particles with positive ‘holes’. This work was not done in solitude, but rather in exchanges with Dirac’s correspondence network. This social context for Dirac’s work contests his image as a lone genius, and documents a community wrestling with the ontological consequences of their work. Unification, consistency, causality, and community are common factors in explanations in the history of physics. This paper argues on the basis of materials in Dirac’s archive that — in addition — mathematical beauty was an epistemological factor in the development of the electron and hole theory. In fact, if we believe that Dirac’s beautiful mathematics captures something of the world, then there is both an epistemology and an ontology of mathematical beauty. (shrink)

Within the literature in green political theory on global environmental threats one can often find dissatisfaction with liberal theories of justice. This is true even though liberal cosmopolitans regularly point to global environmental problems as one reason for expanding the scope of justice beyond the territorial limits of the state. One of the causes for scepticism towards liberal approaches is that many of the most notable anti-cosmopolitan theories are also advanced by liberals. In this paper, I first explain why one (...) of the strongest expressions of liberal anti-cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed because it may fail to support desired environmental ends. The political conception of justice represents one of the most important challenges to cosmopolitanism generally and is thus a serious challenge to viewing global environmental problems in terms of cosmopolitan justice. Second, I will show through the case of anthropogenic global warming that the political conception of justice under current conditions does have clear cosmopolitan implications despite its proponents' claims. (shrink)

It seems better to love virtue than vice, pleasure than pain, good than evil. Perhaps it's also better to love virtuous people than vicious people. But at the same time, it's repugnant to suggest that a mother should love her smarter, more athletic, better looking son than his dim, clumsy, ordinary brother. My task is to help sort out the conflicting intuitions about what we should love. In particular, I want to address a problem for the no-reasons view, the theory (...) that love cannot be rationally justified. Since it seems better to love good people rather than evil villains, it appears that there are indeed reasons for (or, at least, against) love. Is it coherent to talk this way and deny that love can be justified? I think so and will explain how. (shrink)