Though emotional faces preferentially reach awareness, the present study utilised both objective and subjective indices of awareness to determine whether they enhance subjective awareness and “blindsight”. Under continuous flash suppression, participants localised a disgusted, fearful or neutral face (objective index), and rated their confidence (subjective index). Psychopathic traits were also measured to investigate their influence on emotion perception. As predicted, fear increased localisation accuracy, subjective awareness and “blindsight” of upright faces. Coldhearted traits were inversely related to subjective awareness, but not (...) “blindsight”, of upright fearful faces. In a follow-up experiment using inverted faces, increased localisation accuracy and awareness, but not “blindsight”, were observed for fear. Surprisingly, awareness of inverted fearful faces was positively correlated with coldheartedness. These results suggest that emotion enhances both pre-conscious processing and the qualitative experience of awareness, but that pre-conscious and conscious processing of emotional faces rely on at least partially dissociable cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper sketches a dispositionalist conception of laws and shows how the dispositionalist should respond to certain objections. The view that properties are essentially dispositional is able to provide an account of laws that avoids the problems that face the two views of laws (the regularity and the contingent nomic necessitation views) that regard properties as categorical and laws as contingent. I discuss and reject the objections that (i) this view makes laws necessary whereas they are contingent; (ii) this view (...) cannot account for certain kinds of laws of nature and their properties. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions often involve appeals to verdicts about particular cases, sometimes actual, more often hypothetical, and usually with little or no substantive argument in their defense. Philosophers — on both sides of debates over the standing of this practice — have often called the basis for such appeals ‘intuitions’. But, what might such ‘intuitions’ be, such that they could legitimately serve these purposes? Answers vary, ranging from ‘thin’ conceptions that identify intuitions as merely instances of some fairly generic and epistemologically (...) uncontroversial category of mental states or episodes to ‘thick’ conceptions that add to this thin base certain semantic, phenomenological, etiological, or methodological conditions. As this chapter discusses, thick conceptions turn out to have their own methodological problems; some may even leave philosophers in the methodologically untenable position of being unable to determine when anyone is doing philosophy correctly. (shrink)

Kidney markets are prohibited in principle because they are assumed to undermine the seller’s dignity. Considering the trade-off between saving more lives by introducing regulated kidney markets and preserving the seller’s dignity, we argue that it is advisable to demand that citizens restrain their own moral judgements and not interfere with the judgements of those who are willing to sell a kidney. We also argue that it is advisable not only to limit the political implications of the moral argument of (...) dignity concerns toward a market-based solution but also to re-evaluate the dignity argument itself. First, if the dignity argument is to be given normative force, it must also consider the dignity violation of the potential transplant recipient. Second, there seems to be no compelling notion of dignity that demonstrates why it is morally permissible to donate but not to sell a kidney. (shrink)

To understand the future of informed consent, we should pay attention to two ethical-legal sources in addition to the revised Common Rule. Physicians acting as investigators and patients serving as research subjects bring to that relationship a long history regarding consent to treatment, and everyone dealing with research ethics needs to be aware of the Nuremberg Code and other human-rights documents. These three streams make separate and distinctly different contributions to informed consent doctrine.

Let us call a property that is essentially dispositional a potency.1 David Armstrong thinks that potencies do not exist. All sparse properties are essentially categorical, where sparse properties are the explanatory properties of the type science seeks to discover. An alternative view, but not the only one, is that all sparse properties are potencies or supervene upon them. In this paper I shall consider the differences between these views, in particular the objections Armstrong raises against potencies.

Intellectual property law operates with the ontological assumption that immaterial goods such as works, inventions, and designs exist, and that these abstract types can be owned like a piece of land. Alexander Peukert provides a comprehensive critique of this paradigm, showing that the abstract IP object is a speech-based construct, which first crystalised in the eighteenth century. He highlights the theoretical flaws of metaphysical object ontology and introduces John Searle's social ontology as a more plausible approach to the subject (...) matter of IP. On this basis, he proposes an IP theory under which IP rights provide their holders with an exclusive privilege to use reproducible 'Master Artefacts.' Such a legal-realist IP theory, Peukert argues, is both descriptively and prescriptively superior to the prevailing paradigm of the abstract IP object. This work was originally published in German and was translated by Gill Mertens. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Parker Crutchfield argues that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, as some authors claim, then it ought to be covert, i.e., performed without the knowledge of the population that is being morally enhanced. Crutchfield argues that since the aim of compulsory moral bioenhancement is to prevent ultimate harm to the population, compulsory moral bioenhancement is best categorized as a public health issue, and should therefore be governed by the norms and values that (...) apply in public health settings. In this article, I argue for two related claims. First, I question the extent to which compulsory moral enhancement should be considered a public health issue that ought to be governed by the norms and values that apply in public health settings. Second, I argue that Crutchfield's argument that covert moral bioenhancement would better respect people's autonomy than an overt program overlooks two important autonomy‐based reasons that, in fact, favor an overt moral enhancement program over a covert one. (shrink)

Readers familiar with Philip Pettit’s work will not be surprised to find that The Birth of Ethics is at once very ambitious – offering nothing less than a basis for a complete naturalistic reconstr...

Let the chain antichain principle (CAC) be the statement that each partial order on $\mathbb{N}$ possesses an infinite chain or an infinite antichain. Chong, Slaman, and Yang recently proved using forcing over nonstandard models of arithmetic that CAC is $\Pi^1_1$-conservative over $\text{RCA}_0+\Pi^0_1\text{-CP}$ and so in particular that CAC does not imply $\Sigma^0_2$-induction. We provide here a different purely syntactical and constructive proof of the statement that CAC (even together with WKL) does not imply $\Sigma^0_2$-induction. In detail we show using a (...) refinement of Howard's ordinal analysis of bar recursion that $\text{WKL}_0^\omega+\text{CAC}$ is $\Pi^0_2$-conservative over PRA and that one can extract primitive recursive realizers for such statements. Moreover, our proof is finitary in the sense of Hilbert's program. CAC implies that every sequence of $\mathbb{R}$ has a monotone subsequence. This Bolzano-Weierstraß}-like principle is commonly used in proofs. Our result makes it possible to extract primitive recursive terms from such proofs. We also discuss the Erdős-Moser principle, which—taken together with CAC—is equivalent to $\text{RT}^2_2$. (shrink)

It is an old idea, lately out of fashion but now experiencing a revival, that quantum mechanics may best be understood, not as a physical theory with a problematic probabilistic interpretation, but as something closer to a probability calculus per se. However, from this angle, the rather special C *-algebraic apparatus of quantum probability theory stands in need of further motivation. One would like to find additional principles, having clear physical and/or probabilistic content, on the basis of which this apparatus (...) can be reconstructed. In this paper, I explore one route to such a derivation of finite-dimensional quantum mechanics, by means of a set of strong, but probabilistically intelligible, axioms. Stated very informally, these require that systems appear completely classical as restricted to a single measurement, that different measurements, and likewise different pure states, be equivalent (up to the action of a compact group of symmetries), and that every state be the marginal of a bipartite non-signaling state perfectly correlating two measurements. This much yields a mathematical representation of (basic, discrete) measurements as orthonormal subsets of, and states, by vectors in, an ordered real Hilbert space – in the quantum case, the space of Hermitian operators, with its usual tracial inner product. One final postulate (a simple minimization principle, still in need of a clear interpretation) forces the positive cone of this space to be homogeneous and self-dual and hence, to be the state space of a formally real Jordan algebra. From here, the route to the standard framework of finite-dimensional quantum mechanics is quite short. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 22-23, November 2011.

According to Hobbes, individuals care about their relative standing in a way that shapes their social interactions. To model this aspect of Hobbesian psychology, this paper supposes that agents have social preferences, that is, preferences about their comparative resource holdings. Introducing uncertainty regarding the social preferences of others unleashes a process of trust-unravelling, ultimately leading to Hobbes’s ‘state of war’. This Trust-unravelling Model incorporates important features of Hobbes’s argument that past models ignore.

A survey is given of three-valued paraconsistent propositionallogics connected with Jaśkowski’s criterion for constructing paraconsistentlogics. Several problems are raised and four new matrix three-valued paraconsistent logics are suggested.

How can it be rational to work on a new theory that does not yet meet the standards for good or acceptable theories? If diversity of approaches is a condition for scientific progress, how can a scientific community achieve such progress when each member does what it is rational to do, namely work on the best theory? These two methodological problems, the problem of pursuit and the problem of diversity, can be solved by taking into account the cognitive risk that (...) is involved in theory choice. I compare this solution to other proposals, in particular T. S. Kuhn's and P. Kitcher's view that the two problems demonstrate the epistemic significance of the scientific community. (shrink)

The comment endorses and reinforces Daniel W. Graham’s highly original and attractive proposal that early Greek cosmology develops in two stages. In what Graham calls the “meteorological stage” of the sixth century BCE, celestial objects are explained as formations either from fire or from watery exhalations in a roughly planar model of the cosmos. In the “lithic stage” of the mid- and late fifth century introduced by Anaxagoras, the model is that of a central earth around which solid stone-like celestial (...) objects revolve held aloft in a vortex. The change to the lithic stage comes about, according to Graham, as the implications of Parmenides’ epoch-making discovery that the moon is illuminated by the sun come to be understood and are then theoretically exploited. The present comment also proposes that the false explanations of lunar phases and lunar and solar eclipses in the meteorological-stage cosmologies, respectively, of Xenophanes and of Heraclitus may have played a helpful heuristic role in the theoretical breakthrough to heliophotism. (shrink)

The A-theory of time states that there is an absolute fact of the matter about what events are, respectively, in the past, present and future. The B-theory says that all there is to temporality are the relations of earlier-than, later-than and simultaneous-with, and the past, present and future are merely relative.

As Mark Murphy has recently shown, standard justifications of universal divine authority are insufficient. [1] By “divine authority” I shall mean the doctrine that obedience is morally owed to God by all. God would not give us a command that we did not have a reason to act in accordance with, Murphy argues, but it does not follow that we would be obliged, much less morally obliged, to have the fact of God’s having commanded the action be among our practical (...) reasons for the action. We might, for instance, think that what God has commanded us is prudentially the best policy for us or that it is the best possible evidence for what is on independent grounds morally obligatory. (shrink)

In The LEGO Movie, Vitruvius's notion of the "The Special" introduces what will be a central motif for the film. As it turns out, the one who finds this "Piece of Resistance" is not quite the hero he was expected to be. Emmet Brickowoski, a construction worker, will find this "Piece of Resistance". Throughout the film, others suggest to Emmet both implicitly and explicitly that he brings nothing of value to any particular individual or to society, and that consequently he (...) himself has no value. If one interpret The LEGO Movie as being driven by Emmet's quest for discovering his value, the real philosophical turning point in the film is not when Emmet's double‐decker couch permits the Master Builders to escape from the sinking submarine and they realize that Emmet's ideas actually are useful. Rather, it is when Emmet realizes their approval is irrelevant to his value. (shrink)

Retributivism is generally thought to forbid the punishment of the innocent, even if such punishment would produce otherwise good results, such as deterrence. It has recently been argued that because capital punishment always entails the risk of executing an innocent person, instituting capital punishment is tantamount to intentionally taking innocent lives and therefore cannot be justified on retributive grounds. I argue that there are several versions of retributivism, only one of which might categorically forbid risking punishing innocent persons. I also (...) argue that our moral practices reveal either that we do not hold this particular version of retributivism, or that we reject equating risking punishing the innocent with intentionally doing so. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A9102008 00005. (shrink)

We investigate the strength of the existence of a non-principal ultrafilter over fragments of higher-order arithmetic. Let [Formula: see text] be the statement that a non-principal ultrafilter on ℕ exists and let [Formula: see text] be the higher-order extension of ACA0. We show that [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]-conservative over [Formula: see text] and thus that [Formula: see text] is conservative over PA. Moreover, we provide a program extraction method and show that from a proof of a strictly (...) [Formula: see text] statement ∀ f ∃ g A qf in [Formula: see text] a realizing term in Gödel's system T can be extracted. This means that one can extract a term t ∈ T, such that ∀ f A qf). (shrink)

Background and aimThe postpartum depression literacy of perinatal women is closely related to the occurrence, recognition, and treatment of postpartum depression, therefore valid instruments for evaluating the level of PoDLi are of great significance for both research and clinical practice. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt the postpartum depression literacy scale into Chinese and to test its psychometric properties among Chinese perinatal women.Materials and methodsA cross-sectional study was conducted from April to May 2022 in a tertiary hospital in Hangzhou, Zhejiang (...) Province, China. 619 out of the 650 perinatal women that were approached via a convenience sampling method completed the Chinese version of the PoDLiS. Content validity [the content validity index of items and scale-level content validity index ] was evaluated by an expert panel. Psychometric properties, including item analysis, structure validity, convergent and discriminant validity, reliability, criterion validity, and floor/ceiling effect were examined.ResultsThe final version of C-PoDLiS is a six-factor structure consisting of 27 items, which explained 61.00% of the total variance. Adequate content validity was ensured by the expert panel. The modified confirmatory factor analysis model revealed that the 6-factor model fitted the data well. The total Cronbach’s α was 0.862, the total McDonald’s ω was 0.869, and the test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.856. Results of convergent validity and discriminant validity provided good or acceptable psychometric support. Significant correlations between scores of the C-PoDLiS and Mental health literacy scale and Attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help short form scale supported good concurrent and predictive validity, respectively. No floor/ceiling effect was found.ConclusionThe C-PoDLiS was demonstrated to be a sound instrument with good reliability and validity for evaluating Chinese perinatal women’s PoDLi levels. Its use in the future can facilitate data aggregation and outcome comparisons across different studies on this topic. (shrink)

This primarily diagnostic paper offers, from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, a normative analysis of three major injustices in the context of adaptation finance. Adaptation finance includes payments provided by the affluent countries of the Global North to low-income countries in the Global South, countries particularly exposed to the harms of climate change. Relational egalitarianism is the normative view that interactions between people and between institutions have to respect the equal moral status of every human being. The first injustice, from (...) this perspective, consists in the sheer fact that adaptation measures are required at all to deflect harm from people who did not significantly contribute to the causes of climate change. The second injustice consists in the persisting, even increasing adaptation finance gap, as countries of the Global North do neither provide adequate financial means to reduce climate risks, nor even fulfil their commitments to adaptation finance pledged in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009. The third injustice emerges from current procedures to determine criteria for distributing scarce financial resources that consolidate structural injustice. The paper concludes by providing the contours of a practical response to these injustices that respects the demands of relational egalitarianism. (shrink)

We consider games over a finite alphabet with Gurevich-Harrington's winning conditions and restraints as in Yakhnis-Yakhnis . The game tree, the Gurevich-Harrington's kernels of the winning condition and the restraints are defined by finite automata. We give an effective criterion to determine the winning player and an effective presentation of a class of finite automata defined winning strategies.Our approach yields an alternative solution to the games considered by Büchi and Landweber . The BL algorithm is an important tool for solving (...) effectively presented games. The differences between the BL and our algorithms are as follows. Our algorithm is uniformly applicable to winning sets that correspond to boolean combinations of BL winning conditions, while the BL algorithm requires a transformation of such boolean combinations into a single BL condition. Our algorithm directly applies to a larger class of game trees for a given game alphabet than does the BL one. We describe Büchi-Landweber's class of winning conditions in a more transparent way by using finite automata and Gurevich-Harrington's form of winning conditions. Our algorithms that determine the winner of the game and find a winning strategy, are based on a translation of the events in the game in terms of the transition table of the automaton representing the game. This automaton differs from the ones that represent BL winning conditions. Both algorithms need further investigation.The algorithm determining the winner in the game, can be used as a verifier of concurrent programs. This is because programs can be viewed as strategies in Gurevich-Harrington's games and program specifications could be regarded as winning conditions for such games. The algorithm which finds a winning strategy could be used as a basis for automated concurrent program design.The present paper is a sequel to Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 48 277–297. (shrink)

It is a central political goal to secure disabled individuals the same opportunities as others to pursue their conception of a good life. This goal reflects an ambition to combine an egalitarian and a liberal moral intuition. In this article, we analyse how disabled individuals who take part in economic activity should be compensated in order to respect these two intuitions. The article asks how a system of disability compensation should be structured and what the level of such compensation should (...) be. It also analyses how the answers to these questions depend on whether the disabled individuals are held responsible for their choice of work effort. (shrink)

In his 1982 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke develops a famous argument that purports to show that there are no facts about what we mean by the expressions of our language: ascriptions of meaning, such as “Jones means addition by ‘+’” or Smith means green by ‘green’”, are according to Kripke’s Wittgenstein neither true nor false. Kripke’s Wittgenstein thus argues for a form of non-factualism about ascriptions of meaning: ascriptions of meaning do not purport to state (...) facts. Define semantic realism to be the view that ascriptions of meaning are apt to be assessed in terms of truth and falsity, and are, at least in some instances, true. Semantic realism, thus defined, is a form of cognitivism about semantic judgement, according to which judgements ascribing meaning express beliefs, states apt for assessment in terms of truth and falsity. Kripke’s Wittgenstein thus argues against semantic realism, and in favour of a form of semantic non-cognitivism.1 En route to semantic non-cognitivism, Kripke’s Wittgenstein argues against dispositionalist theories of meaning, which hold something roughly along the lines of the following: Jones means magpie by “magpie” if and only if Jones is disposed to apply “magpie” to magpies in ideal conditions (where the ideal conditions can be specified in terms that don’t presuppose the notion of meaning, and are such that in those conditions Jones applies “magpie” to a thing if and only if that thing is a magpie). (shrink)

The paper argues that renormalization in quantum field theory was not a radically new - and possibly ad hoc - technique to save a badly flawed theory, but rather the culmination of a methodological strategy that physicists had been applying for a long time. The strategy was to obtain reliable results from unreliable theories by making the derivation of the results independent of possible future modifications of the theory. Examples of this practice include Bohr's use of the Correspondence Principle and (...) Heisenberg's S-matrix theory. (shrink)