The paper argues that causal systems and spatial patterns are species of the same genus, namely pattern, and that a clear view of spatial patterns throws light on some aspects of the ontological nature of causal systems. In particular, it is argued that all patterns (and systems) depend on a fiat delimitation of something which in itself is a unity without borders. Pattern realism is true.

In this paper, we present and defend an analysis of harm that we call the Negative Influence on Well-Being Account (NIWA). We argue that NIWA has a number of significant advantages compared to its two main rivals, the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) and the Causal Account (CA), and that it also helps explain why those views go wrong. In addition, we defend NIWA against a class of likely objections, and consider its implications for several questions about harm and its role (...) in normative theorizing. (shrink)

Just as some illnesses and injuries are worse than others, so some deaths appear to be worse than others. This is so not only for the fairly trivial reason that those deaths that are bad are worse than those deaths that are not bad: less trivially, some bad deaths seem to be worse than other bad deaths. For instance, whereas it may well be bad for an eighty-year-old to die, it is likely to be even worse for a forty-year-old, and (...) still worse for a twenty-year-old. Supposing that the badness of death does indeed vary in this way, what factor or factors does it vary *with*? The example just given indicates that age is one such factor: in particular, the earlier one’s death occurs, the worse it is. For a number of reasons, however, things are more complicated—though not quite as complicated as some philosophers have suggested. (shrink)

This chapter is an opinionated survey of three main views about meaning in life: objectivism, on which a component of a person’s life can contribute meaning to it even if she in no way cares about the component; pure subjectivism, on which the person’s caring about the component in some suitable way is all it takes for the component to contribute meaning to her life; and hybridism, on which whether a component of someone’s life contributes meaning to it depends both (...) on her caring about the component in some suitable way and the objective value of the component. The authors discuss various central challenges that these three views respectively face. Among other things, they provide reasons to think that the challenges for pure subjectivism are less serious than they are ordinarily taken to be, and less serious than those that confront objectivism and hybridism. (shrink)

A fundamental assumption of theories of decision-making is that we detect mismatches between intention and outcome, adjust our behavior in the face of error, and adapt to changing circumstances. Is this always the case? We investigated the relation between intention, choice, and introspection. Participants made choices between presented face pairs on the basis of attractiveness, while we covertly manipulated the relationship between choice and outcome that they experienced. Participants failed to notice conspicuous mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome (...) they were presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. We call this effect choice blindness. (shrink)

Contemporary or traditional? Blended or seeker? Pop or "classical"? Chorus or hymn? Combo or organ? Questions concerning music in worship abound these days. Is there a practical way to deal with these issues? In Music and Ministry: A Biblical Counterpoint, Calvin Johansson looks to God's Word for principles foundational to music ministry. Weaving together great scriptural truths, he establishes the need for a "directional balance" between pastoral contextualization and prophetic purity. In a time of facile musical accommodation of the (...) gospel to culture, Dr. Johansson suggests that a heightened concern for musical style and quality is in order-not for the sake of music, but for the sake of the gospel. (shrink)

ONTOLOGY This book is a book about the world. I am concerned with ontology, not merely with language. Many ontological treatises concentrate largely on the ...

The paper highlights a certain kind of self-falsifying utterance, which I shall call antiperformative assertions, not noted in speech-act theory thus far. By taking such assertions into account, the old question whether explicit performatives have a truth-value can be resolved. I shall show that explicit performatives are in fact self-verifyingly true, but they are not related to propositions the way ordinary assertions are; antiperformatives have the same unusual relation to propositions, but are self-falsifyingly false. Explicit performatives are speech acts performed (...) in situations where it is important that the speaker is self-reflectively aware of what he is doing in the speech act. Antiperformatives, on the other hand, are speech acts performed in situations where lack of direct self-reflectiveness is required. In order to situate performatives and antiperformatives, the analysis is embedded within a more general discussion of self-falsifying and self-verifying assertions. (shrink)

Inductive thinking is a universal human habit; we generalise from our experiences the best we can. The induction problem is to identify which observed regularities provide reasonable justification for inductive conclusions. In the natural sciences, we can often use strict laws in making successful inferences about unobserved states of affairs. In the social sciences, by contrast, we have no strict laws, only regularities which most often are conditioned on ceteris paribus clauses. This makes it much more difficult to make reliable (...) inferences in the social sciences. In particular, we want knowledge about general causal relations in order to be able to determine what to do in order to achieve a certain state of affairs. Knowledge about causal relations that are also valid in the future requires experiments or so called ‘natural experiments’. Only knowledge derived from such experiences enable us to draw reasonably reliable inferences about how to act in order to achieve our goals. (shrink)

Nurses working in correctional and forensic mental health settings face unique challenges in the provision of care to patients within custodial settings. The subjectivities of both patients and nurses are subject to the power relations, discourses and abjection encountered within these practice milieus. Using a poststructuralist approach using the work of Foucault, Kristeva, and Deleuze and Guattari, this paper explores how both patient and nurse subjectivities are produced within the carceral logic of this apparatus of capture. Recognizing that subjectivities are (...) fluid and dynamic, and capable of change, Deleuze and Guattari's concept of deterritorialization will illustrate opportunities for resistance, where nurses can begin to practice outside the dominant carceral logic (and restrictions) of the system. (shrink)

This chapter, which examines the argument of Epicurus about the timing problem of death, clarifies the Epicurean challenge and identifies some merits and disadvantages of the various anti-Epicurean views. It also explains the concept of several relevant principles including atemporalism, subsequentism, priorism, concurrentism, and eternalism, arguing that the Epicurean argument and its premises are valid.

It is often suggested that during development the brain barriers are immature. This argument stems from teleological interpretations and experimental observations of the high protein concentrations in fetal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and decreases in apparent permeability of passive markers during development. We argue that the developmental blood–CSF barrier restricts the passage of lipid‐insoluble molecules by the same mechanism as in the adult (tight junctions) rendering the paracellular pathway an unlikely route of entry. Instead, we suggest that both protein and passive (...) markers are transferred across the epithelium through a transcellular route. We propose that changes in volume of distribution can largely explain the decrease in apparent permeability for passive markers and that developmentally regulated cellular transfer explains changes in CSF protein concentrations. The blood–CSF tight junctions are functionally mature from very early in development, and it appears that transfer from blood into embryonic brain occurs predominately via CSF rather than the vasculature. BioEssays 30:237–248, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Reasoning research suggests that people use more stringent criteria when they evaluate others' arguments than when they produce arguments themselves. To demonstrate this “selective laziness,” we used a choice blindness manipulation. In two experiments, participants had to produce a series of arguments in response to reasoning problems, and they were then asked to evaluate other people's arguments about the same problems. Unknown to the participants, in one of the trials, they were presented with their own argument as if it was (...) someone else's. Among those participants who accepted the manipulation and thus thought they were evaluating someone else's argument, more than half rejected the arguments that were in fact their own. Moreover, participants were more likely to reject their own arguments for invalid than for valid answers. This demonstrates that people are more critical of other people's arguments than of their own, without being overly critical: They are better able to tell valid from invalid arguments when the arguments are someone else's rather than their own. (shrink)

In a recent Utilitas article, Neil Feit argues that every person occupies a well-being level of zero at all times and possible worlds at which she fails to exist. Views like his face the problem of the subject': how can someone have a well-being level in a scenario where she lacks intrinsic properties? Feit argues that this problem can be solved by noting, among other things, that a proposition about a person can be true at a possible world in which (...) neither she nor the proposition exists. In this response, we argue that Feit has not solved the problem of the subject, and also raise various related problems for his approach. (shrink)

As the official UK COVID Inquiry is investigating the response by the government to the 2020 global pandemic, revealing the difficulties that the Johnson administration had to face and the overall lack of adequate preparedness at the top of the UK executive, people are becoming growingly aware of the many challenges that such situations pose in terms of crisis management and public governance. Beyond the somewhat sterile blame game played by leading political actors, this formal accountability forum has also revealed (...) competing narratives about the crisis that might have hampered any coherent political solution. This article proposes to focus on the ‘official’ narratives by the UK government and to analyse critically the way Boris Johnson narrativised his political response to the pandemic in order to examine how his unconventional style of leadership was deployed during a global crisis. Using a typology of crisis management inspired by crisis expert and leadership scholar Arjen Boin, the objective is to examine how ‘crisis narratives’ framed the way the UK government responded to the crisis. (shrink)

Ruben Östlund’s film Force Majeure was mostly received as a depiction of the crisis of masculinity. And it is, but that particular theme is also placed within a larger context concerning questions of value, understanding, order, and control, questions asked not only on a thematic level but also through cutting, framing, and the use of camera views. Not accepting any simple dichotomy between form and meaning, Force Majeure places itself firmly in an avant- garde and modernist tradition. Thereby the film (...) is also related to this tradition’s ambition of investigating Western thought, knowledge and art anew, problematising given forms of rational thinking in order for something new to emerge. In the wake of World War II it was, for thinkers like Adorno, Foucault, Stockhausen, and Boulez, seen as unavoidable and urgent to deconstruct the conventions and norms that had made Auschwitz possible. It is still urgent. This article takes its starting point in the connections between avant-garde serialism in music, Foucault’s serialist methods of research and Deleuze’s theories of modernist film, in order to grasp how the aesthetics of Force Majeure continues to deconstruct. (shrink)

The live outdoor webcam seems inseparable from the mid-1990s’ popular proliferation of the Internet. Combining a well-known medium, i.e. the photograph, with a new one, i.e. the Internet, the live outdoor webcam seems in the rear-view mirror to have contributed significantly to the popular perception of the Internet as a globally distended and thus “geographical” medium. Moreover, due to its role in the NASA Triana mission, the never-realised flagship of the Clinton–Gore administration’s Digital Earth project, the live webcam seemed to (...) play an important part in the construction of what leading geographers coined a “virtual geography”—the geography of the Internet, and the networked geography—that sought to establish itself as a new field of study during the late 1990s. In order to substantiate for this interpretation, I would like in the first part of this article to identify a number of basic characteristics of the outdoor webcam and, in the second, to analyse and discuss two papers written by leading scholars in the field; papers which have been important in the assessment of the impact of the Internet and geographical information systems (GIS) before the scientific community as well as policy makers within technological innovation and the public sector. (shrink)

The legacy of Nisbett and Wilson’s classic article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes , is mixed. It is perhaps the most cited article in the recent history of consciousness studies, yet no empirical research program currently exists that continues the work presented in the article. To remedy this, we have introduced an experimental paradigm we call choice blindness [Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. . Failure to detect mismatches between intention (...) and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310, 116–119.]. In the choice blindness paradigm participants fail to notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. In this article, we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis to investigate a corpus of introspective reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. We contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated vs. manipulated trials, but find very few differences between these two groups of reports. (shrink)

Derek Parfit famously defends a number of surprising views about "fission." One is that, in such a scenario, it is indeterminate whether I have survived or not. Another is that the fission case shows that it does not matter, in itself, whether I survive or not. Most critics of the first view contend that fission makes me cease to exist. Most opponents of the second view contend that fission does not preserve everything that matters in ordinary survival. In this paper (...) I shall provide a critique that does not rely on either of these contentions. There are other, interrelated reasons to reject Parfit's defense of the two theses. In particular, the availability of the following view creates trouble for Parfit: I determinately survive fission, but it is indeterminate which fission product I am. (shrink)

A popular view of harming is the causal account (CA), on which harming is causing harm. CA has several attractive features. In particular, it appears well equipped to deal with the most important problems for its main competitor, the counterfactual comparative account (CCA). However, we argue that, despite its advantages, CA is ultimately an unacceptable theory of harming. Indeed, while CA avoids several counterexamples to CCA, it is vulnerable to close variants of some of the problems that beset CCA.

In this article I will relate the kinetic sculpture Hylozoic Ground by architect Phillip Beesley and a collaborative group to theoretical and philosophical studies concerning the human subject. I will ask the deep philosophical question what is life? with the expectancy of a close relationship between ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’. Under inspiration from Yair Neuman and Søren Brier, I operate with the idea that ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’ would be directly related to communication processes in the body of both physically measurable and (...) physically immeasurable kinds. And that such communication processes are best described by modelling a hierarchy of qualitatively different, but co-dependent kinds of communication. (shrink)

The present paper contains a new attack on the measurement problem. The point of departure is a realist view according to which i) state functions in quantum theory describe physical states of affairs and not information states attributed to observers, and ii) in theses states, some observables are indeterminate and not merely unknown, i.e., value determinism is rejected. Furthermore, quantisation of interaction is accepted as an empirically established fact, independently of any interpretations of quantum theory. From these assumptions it follows (...) that Hermitian operators replacing classical variables may be viewed as representing actions from the environment done on physical systems represented by the state functions upon which the operators operate. Sometimes this influence is followed by a discontinuous, indeterministic and irreversible state change; in other words, the system undergoes a collapse, which is represented by a projection operator. Thus, assuming a realistic view on quantum states and their changes, we have an explanation for the collapse of the wave function. Since the collapse is a discontinuous, random and irreversible state change, the classical form of physical explanation in terms of a mechanism which describes how a system continuously changes its state is impossible. Hence, if we accept quantisation of interaction, we must give up our demand for a ordinary mechanical explanation for the collapse. Neither can we state, in advance, sufficient conditions for the collapse, since it is an indeterministic theory. (shrink)

The problem of identity is one of the milestones of philosophical thinking. It is a complex question, a prism with multiple vertices. In this paper I will focus on two key-concepts related to identity, namely, death and community. Death stands as end of life, but as a possibility of it. The ghost "appears", then, in a privileged position for the dialogue and the understanding of this phenomenon. Moreover, as social beings, neither individuals can be separated from the community in which (...) they are registered; nor it is possible to distance the ghosts and functions historically fulfilled in this respect. Throughout the text I will discuss the functions that have been and those that would be of ghosts; understanding ghosts as a referring dialogic and therapeutic constitution of identity. El problema de la identidad constituye uno de los hitos fundamentales de pensamiento filosófico. Es una cuestión compleja, un prisma con múltiples vértices. El presente artículo se centrará en dos hitos fundamentales relacionados con la identidad, a saber: muerte y comunidad. La muerte se sitúa como fin de la vida, pero como posibilidad de la misma. "Aparece", entonces, el fantasma en una posición privilegiada para el diálogo y la comprensión de este fenómeno. Además, en tanto seres sociales los individuos no pueden ser separados de la comunidad en la que se inscriben. Tampoco es posible distanciar a los fantasmas y las funciones cumplidas históricamente en este aspecto. A lo largo del texto se examinarán cuáles han sido y pueden ser estas funciones a cumplir por los fantasmas entendidos como referente dialógico y terapéutico de la constitución de la identidad. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Suppose that, for every possible event and person who would exist whether or not the event were to occur, there is a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were to occur, and a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were not to occur. Do facts about such connections between events and well-being levels always suffice to determine whether an event would harm or benefit a person? Many seemingly attractive accounts of harm (...) and benefit entail an affirmative answer to this question, including the widely held Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA). In this paper, however, we argue that all such accounts will be unsuccessful. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the question of whether a person’s existence can be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence. Recently, Nils Holtug and Melinda A. Roberts have defended an affirmative answer. These defenses, I shall argue, do not succeed. In different ways, Holtug and Roberts have got the metaphysics and axiology wrong. However, I also argue that a person’s existence can after all be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence, though for reasons other than those (...) provided by Holtug and Roberts. (shrink)

It is argued that medical science requires a classificatory system that (a) puts functions in the taxonomic center and (b) does justice ontologically to the difference between the processes which are the realizations of functions and the objects which are their bearers. We propose formulae for constructing such a system and describe some of its benefits. The arguments are general enough to be of interest to all the life sciences.

The years between 1970 and 1980 represented a formative period in the development of Chicana feminist thought in the United States. During this period, Chicana feminists addressed the specific issues affecting Chicanas as women of color in the United States. As a result of their collective efforts in struggling against racial, class, and gender oppression, Chicana feminists developed an ideological discourse that addressed three major issues. These were the relationship between Chicana feminism and the ideology of cultural nationalism, feminist baiting (...) within the Chicano movement, and the relationship between the Chicana feminist movement and the white feminist movement. This article describes the development of Chicana feminism and compares it with Asian American and Black feminism, which faced similar problems. (shrink)

A pure time preference is a preference for something to occur at one point in time rather than another, merely because of when it occurs in time. Such preferences are widely regarded as paradigm examples of irrational preferences. However, Rosemary Lowry and Martin Peterson have recently argued that, for instance, a pure time preference to go to the opera tonight rather than next month may be rationally permissible, even if the amounts of intrinsic value realized in both cases are identical. (...) In this reply, we argue that Lowry and Peterson's argument is unsuccessful. (shrink)

1. Contemporary psychology values quantitative over qualitative research and emphasises the importance of the neuroscientific approach. However, there are cases in which quantitative research desig...

This is the first book in welfare economics to be primarily intended for undergraduates and non-specialists. Concepts such as Pareto optimality in a market economy, the compensation criterion, and the social welfare function are explored in detail. Market failures are analysed by using different ways of measuring welfare changes. The book also examines public choice, and the issues of provision of public goods, median voter equilibrium, government failures, efficient and optimal taxation, and intergenerational equity. The three final chapters are devoted (...) to applied welfare economics: methods for revealing people's preferences, cost-benefit analysis, and project evaluation in a risky world. The book is intended for introductory and intermediate courses in welfare economics, microeconomics, and public economics. It will also be suitable for courses in health economics, environmental economics, and cost-benefit analysis, as well as those undertaking project evaluations in government agencies and private firms. (shrink)

Ackermann et al. treat both genetic and paleoanthropological data too superficially to support their conclusions. The case ofFOXP2and Neanderthals is a prime example, which I will comment on in some detail; the issues are much more complex than they appear in Ackermann et al.

This study focuses on the physical expressions and intensity of embodiment that occur in the Ironman Triathlon. More specifically, the study investigates the transformational bodily experiences taking place during Ironman competitions. Using an ethnographic approach, a total of 29 Ironman triathletes participated in the study (15 men and 14 women). Theoretically, the article focuses on how triathletes’ bodies ‘move’ between different forms of embodiment. The results show that, in the process of disciplining the body, the athletes reconceptualized feelings of pain, (...) nausea and even disgust, making these emotionally expressive aspects of the corpus into a part of the experience and bending them towards the pleasure of reaching potential divinity. Situated in a long tradition of philosophical and sociological explorations of the transgressing and transcending body, the study interprets and understands the performing body as a site for change and utopian possibilities. Thus the study adds to existing debates on contemporary individuals’ exploration of the existential and corporeal dimensions of modernity. (shrink)

El pintor Rafael Ángel Fernández Piedra, fallecido en 2018, es considerado uno de los artistas más representativos de Costa Rica, cuya obra ha tenido también una proyección internacional considerable, al formar parte de la Colección del Museo José Luis Cuevas en Ciudad de México, así como de la Colección del Museo Rally de Arte Contemporáneo, en Punta del Este, Uruguay, entre otros. Obtuvo el premio Aquileo J. Echeverría en Artes Plásticas en 1968, 1972 y 1975, así como el premio Nacional (...) de Cultura Magón en 2002, el más importante galardón que otorga el Estado costarricense en reconocimiento a una vida dedicada a la cultura. Como homenaje póstumo a este insigne creador, en esta edición la Revista Ístmica convierte su sección de Artes Visuales en una galería virtual dedicada a la exposición de parte de su obra, comentada sentidamente por su hija, la curadora y también artista, Alma Fernández. (shrink)

According to the standard version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, an event is overall harmful for an individual if and only if she would have been on balance better off if it had not occurred. This view faces the “preemption problem.” In the recent literature, there are various ingenious attempts to deal with this problem, some of which involve slight additions to, or modifications of, the counterfactual comparative account. We argue, however, that none of these attempts work, and (...) that the preemption problem continues to haunt the counterfactual comparative account. (shrink)