In this paper, I present and motivate a modal set theory consistent with the idea that there is only one size of infinity.

This article examines the prospects for an authentic regional architecture in the light of alternative development paradigms. It is argued that the failure of orthodox development strategies and the domination of western culture, including architecture, over non-Western cultures, is due to fundamental imbalances between northern and southern economic structures. By contrast, ecodevelopment, appropriate technology and regional architecture all represent significant devolutionary movements toward a global “eco-culture.” A cultural typology placing eco-culture in historical perspective is outlined. It is concluded that, to (...) be fully effective, changes in development patterns in the south have to be matched by equivalent cultural changes in the North. (shrink)

Concerns of intellectual property infringement in China slow the dissemination of clean technology (Cleantech) innovation that could help bring the pace of global warming under control. We use the U.S. post‐World War 2 policy decisions with respect to Japan and Europe (the Marshall Plan) to show how this problem can be addressed. To help Japan become a western style democracy and stem the tide of communism, the U.S. transferred much of its extant intellectual property to Japan with a promise to (...) open US markets to Japanese goods. The United States did not require Japan to open its markets to U.S. goods. As a result, Japan became a staunch U.S. political ally in Asia, but also a serious economic competitor to the United States. While the Marshall Plan deployed different resources, the political outcomes were similar to Japan: Western Europe was a bulwark against communism. As global warming has become a major strategic issue, we argue that a comparable IPR initiative is required for China. This is not just a matter of doing the right thing as members of global commons, but is also matter of national security. We propose that by facilitating and managing the flow and sharing of U.S., EU, and Japanese Cleantech intellectual property with China—through a Cleantech Marshall Plan—a positive strategic relationship may be built while helping to bring global warming under control. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the meanings of some natural language expressions should be thought of as functions on their own continuations. Continuations are a well-established analytic tool in the theory of programming language semantics; in brief, a continuation is the entire default future of a computation. I show how a continuation-based grammar can unify several aspects of natural language quantification in a new way: merely stating the truth conditions for quantificational expressions in terms of continuations automatically accounts for scope displacement (...) and scope ambiguity. To prove this claim, I exhibit a simple finite context-free grammar with a strictly compositional semantics in which quantificational NPs are interpreted in situ but take semantic scope over larger constituents. There is no Quantifier Raising (nor any use of a level of Logical Form distinct from overt syntax), no Cooper Storage (or similar mechanisms used in many recent HPSG, Categorial, or Type-logical treatments), and no need for type-shifting (as in Hendriks' Flexible Types account). Continuations also provide a natural account of generalized coordination that does not require either type-shifting or type polymorphism. Compositionality issues are discussed in some detail. (shrink)

The impact of neoliberal reforms of education systems on the work of teachers and school leaders, particularly in relation to high-stakes accountability frameworks, has been extensively studied in recent decades. One significant aspect of neoliberal schooling is the emergence of quasi-autonomous public schools (such as Academies in England, Charter Schools in the USA and Independent Public Schools in Australia), characterised by heterarchical governance models, the promotion of entrepreneurial leadership cultures, and the promotion of a discourse of pursuing educational equity by (...) means of ‘achievement for all’. This paper explores the emergence of a mode of teacher professionalism characteristic of these quasi-autonomous schools, and conceptualises this as being ‘neo-performative’. The neo-performative profession is shaped by the shift in the focus of the regulation and management of schools from ‘governing to governance’, and the consequential rise of the ‘responsibilised profession’, and marked by the emergence of an entrepreneurial model of school leadership. The paper argues that this new conceptualisation of teacher professionalism requires further, more focused, empirical study in order to explore how neoperformative teachers and school leaders articulate their vision of educational equity and social justice, and how they enact this vision in an increasingly intensified high-stakes accountability culture. (shrink)

My thesis is that there are good reasons for a philosophical account of measurement to deal primarily with the properties or magnitudes of objects measured, rather than with the objects themselves. The account I present here embodies both a realism about measurement and a realism about the existence of the properties involved in measurement. It thus provides an alternative to most current treatments of measurement, many of which are operationalistic or conventionalistic, and nearly all of which are nominalistic.1 This enables (...) the present account to give better explanations of a number of features of measurement and other aspects of science than competing accounts of measurement can, and to be more readily integrated into a realist account of natural laws and causation. It also illustrates a general strategy for combining a familiar and powerful approach to representation with intensional entities like properties, which I think can be useful for dealing with a number of philosophical problems. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have disagreed about whether "the folk" are intuitively incompatibilists or compatibilists, and they have disagreed about the role of abstraction in generating such intuitions. New experimental evidence using Construal Level Theory is presented. The experiments support the views that the folk are intuitively both incompatibilists and compatibilists, and that abstract mental representations do shift intuitions, but not in a univocal way.

Recent neo-Humean theories of laws of nature have placed substantial emphasis on the characteristic epistemic roles played by laws in scientific practice. In particular, these theories seek to understand laws in terms of their optimal predictive utility to creatures in our epistemic situation. In contrast to other approaches, this view has the distinct advantage that it is able to account for a number of pervasive features possessed by putative actual laws of nature. However, it also faces some unique challenges. First, (...) since the view tries to characterize the laws in terms of their predictive utility, any respects in which putative actual laws are sub-optimally predictively useful are inherently problematic. Such "predictive infelicities" can easily be found among our best physical theories. Second, in tying the laws to our epistemic situation, neo-Humeanism raises the possibility that by changing our epistemic situation, we can change the laws themselves, though it is hard to believe that we have such influence over the laws. This paper aims to address both of these challenges, first by presenting a variety of strategies for explaining away predictive infelicities, and then by developing a version of Lewis's "rigidification" strategy to preclude the possibility of our changing the laws. (shrink)

Ethical or ‘socially sustainable’ sourcing mechanisms mandating labour standards among the suppliers and subcontractors that organisations source goods and services from are becoming more common. The issue of how labour activist groups such as trade unions can encourage organisations to adopt and strengthen these mechanisms within domestic production networks is largely unexplored. Using three cases of domestic sustainable sourcing campaigns developed by unions in Britain, the strategies used by labour activists, the characteristics of the organisations targeted and the motivations of (...) lead firms for improving sourcing practices are analysed. The article makes a significant contribution by demonstrating that organisational susceptibility to reputational risk is a key factor influencing the capacity of activist groups to convince and compel their targets to improve sourcing practices. It argues that different types of organisations are susceptible to reputational damage in different ways, that risk events provide opportunities for unions to strengthen their leverage against target organisations, and that the multidimensional nature of corporate reputation needs to be better considered for understanding how campaigns are framed and executed. (shrink)

Chris Letheby, Jaipreet Mattu, and Eric Hochstein try to put an end to the “mysticism wars,” by which they mean the battle between psychedelic researchers who hold that mystical concepts ought to be employed in attempts to describe and understand psychedelic experiences and those who do not hold this. Letheby, Mattu, and Hochstein side with the former and do so on the grounds that (as they put it), “there are no good reasons to abandon mystical concepts in psychedelic science, (...) and plenty of good reasons to keep them.” At bottom, they contend that critiques of the pro-mystical-concepts view can be solved via clarifying concepts and recognizing basic (though significant) distinctions. And though they grant that mystical concepts may one day be superseded in the science of psychedelics, they maintain that this should not occur on the basis of a misplaced conceptual critique, as is (they maintain) the present-day critique of the pro-mystical-concepts view. (shrink)

Chris L. Firestone and Nathan Jacobs integrate and interpret the work of leading Kant scholars to come to a new and deeper understanding of Kant's difficult book, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In this text, Kant's vocabulary and language are especially tortured and convoluted. Readers have often lost sight of the thinker's deep ties to Christianity and questioned the viability of the work as serious philosophy of religion. Firestone and Jacobs provide strong and cogent grounds for taking (...) Kant's religion seriously and defend him against the charges of incoherence. In their reading, Christian essentials are incorporated into the confines of reason, and they argue that Kant establishes a rational religious faith in accord with religious conviction as it is elaborated in his mature philosophy. For readers at all levels, this book articulates a way to ground religion and theology in a fully fledged defense of Religion which is linked to the larger corpus of Kant's philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

Law and the Formation of Modern Europe explores processes of legal construction in both the national and supranational domains, and it provides an overview of the modern European legal order. In its supranational focus, it examines the sociological pressures which have given rise to European public law, the national origins of key transnational legal institutions and the elite motivations driving the formation of European law. In its national focus, it addresses legal questions and problems which have assumed importance in parallel (...) fashion in different national societies, and which have shaped European law more indirectly. Examples of this are the post-1914 transformation of classical private law, the rise of corporatism, the legal response to the post-1945 legacy of authoritarianism, the emergence of human rights law and the growth of judicial review. This two-level sociological approach to European law results in unique insights into the dynamics of national and supranational legal formation. (shrink)

The chapter undertakes three main tasks. The first is to review, briefly, the history of psychedelics in psychiatry, including the phenomenological and behavioural effects that first led to their being studied for therapeutic purposes. The second is to give an overview of recent research into the safety, efficacy, and therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The third is to summarize the contributions of each of the chapters collected in this volume and show how they address philosophical issues arising from the new (...) wave of psychedelic psychiatry. The topics of these chapters cluster around three broad themes, in terms of which the volume is organized: ‘Self and Mind’, ‘Science and Psychiatry’, and ‘Ethics and Spirituality’. (shrink)

Our society, in general, and health care, in particular, faces notable challenges due to the emergence of innovative digital technologies. The use of socially assistive robots in aged care is a particular digital application that provokes ethical reflection. The answers we give to the ethical questions associated with socially assistive robots are framed by ontological and anthropological considerations of what constitutes human beings and how the meaning of being human relates to how these robots are conceived. Religious beliefs and secular (...) worldviews, each of which may participate fully in pluralist societies, have an important responsibility in this foundational debate, as anthropological theories can be inspired by religious and secular viewpoints. This article identifies seven anthropological considerations grounded in the synthesis of biblical scriptures, Roman Catholic documents, and recent research literature. We highlight the inspirational quality of these anthropological considerations when dealing with ethical issues regarding the development and use of socially assistive robots in aged care. With this contribution, we aim to foster a global and inclusive dialogue on digitalization in aged care that deeply challenges our basic understanding of what constitutes a human being and how this notion relates to machine artefacts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A review of two of the strands of cultural studies that Mark Fenster contends are superior to Murray Edelman’s analysis of mass public opinion—Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and Bourdieu’s sociology—and a more general look at work in the field of cultural studies suggests that all of these alternatives suffer from severe theoretical and methodological limitations. Future studies of culture and politics need to pose questions similar to the ones that preoccupied Edelman, but they must move beyond the political and (...) interpretive biases that have dominated cultural studies (some of which Edelman shared), as well as the questionable view of “ideology” as a matter of elite domination of the masses, rather than as a mediating, constitutive force in the process of individual opinion formation. (shrink)

Is radical skepticism ethically problematic? This paper argues that it is. Radical skepticism’s strong regulation of our doxastic economy results in us having to forego doxastic commitments that we owe to others. Whatever skepticism’s epistemic defects, it is ethically defective. In turn, I defend Moralism, the view that the kind of extreme doubt characteristic of radical skepticism is a serious moral and eudaimonic weakness of radical skeptical epistemology. Whether this means that skepticism is false or incorrect, however, is a further (...) claim that Moralists may or may not accept. I distinguish between an encroachment and abrogation version of the view, and show how each one bears on radical skepticism. In either case, Moralism makes our beliefs less vulnerable to radical revision. The paper concludes with some exploratory reflections on whether the argument can be extended to show that radical skepticism is politically problematic, even risking injustice. (shrink)

This paper analyzes sluicing as anaphora to an anti-constituent (a continuation), that is, to the semantic remnant of a clause from which a subconstituent has been removed. For instance, in Mary said that [John saw someone yesterday], but she didn’t say who, the antecedent clause is John saw someone yesterday, the subconstituent targeted for removal is someone, and the ellipsis site following who is anaphoric to the scope remnant John saw ___ yesterday. I provide a compositional syntax and semantics on (...) which the relationship between the targeted subconstituent and the rest of the antecedent clause is one of scopability, not movement or binding. This correctly predicts that sluicing should be sensitive to scope islands, but not to syntactic islands. Unlike the currently dominant approaches to sluicing, there is no need to posit syntactic structure internal to the ellipsis site, nor is there any need for a semantic mutual-entailment requirement. Nevertheless, the fragment handles phenomena usually taken to suggest a close syntactic correspondence between the antecedent and the sluice, including case matching, voice matching, and verbal argument structure matching. In addition, the analysis handles phenomena exhibiting antecedent/sluice mismatches, including examples such as John remembers meeting someone, but he doesn’t remember who, , and especially so-called sprouting examples such as John left, but I don’t know when, in which there is no overt subconstituent to target for removal. In Sect. 5, I show how the analysis accounts for Andrews Amalgams such as Sally ate [I don’t know what] today, in which the antecedent surrounds the sluiced clause. Finally, in Sect. 6, I propose a new semantic constraint on sluicing: the Answer Ban, which says that the antecedent clause must not resolve, or even partially resolve, the issue raised by the sluiced interrogative. (shrink)

Most studies of the so-called proportion problem seek to understand how lexical and structural properties of sentences containing adverbial quantifiers give rise to various proportional readings. This paper explores a related but distinct problem: given a use of a particular sentence in context, why do only some of the expected proportional readings seem to be available? That is, why do some sentences allow an asymmetric reading when other, structurally similar sentences seem to require a symmetric reading? Potential factors suggested in (...) the literature include the distribution of donkey pronouns, certain uniqueness implications, and focus structures. I argue here that the use of an adverbial quantifier presupposes HOMOGENEITY: all individual situations that get lumped into a single case for the purposes of evaluating the quantification must agree on whether they satisfy the nuclear scope. For instance, in order for a token of Usually, if a farmer owns a donkey, he beats it to be felicitous when construed under a farmer-dominant asymmetric reading, the context must be consistent with the proposition that each farmer either beats all or none of his donkeys. Thus proportional sentences are indeed systematically ambiguous, but only some readings will be felicitous in a given context. (shrink)

Many recent attacks on consequentialism and several defenses of pluralism have relied on arguments for the incommensurability of value. Such arguments have, generally, turned on empirical appeals to aspects of our everyday experience of value conflict. My intention, largely, is to bypass these arguments and turn instead to a discussion of the conceptual apparatus needed to make the claim that values are incommensurable. After delineating what it would mean for values to be incommensurable, I give an a priori argument that (...) such is impossible. It is widely accepted that value is conceptually tied to desire. I argue that, more specifically, it is proportional to merited desire strength. This connection gives one a metric of all value if there is any such thing. This metric entails that value is a complete ordering over all states of affairs, or, in other words, that value is commensurable. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Habermasian ideal of deliberation has long been seen as an extension of, and complement to, political action. But Diana Mutz's empirical studies of face-to-face interactions reveal a conflict between political participation and political deliberation: The more likely people are to be exposed to diverse political opinions, the less likely they are to participate, and those who participate most tend to have the least exposure to diverse political opinions. She hypothesizes, however, that the infrastructure of the Internet might allow (...) for the creation of a forum for online political debate that is sufficiently generalizable to result in deliberation. Champions of the Internet's democratic potential similarly praise its diversifying influence on political discussion and the ways in which it lowers barriers to access. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that new technologies have truly transformed political action or produced meaningful deliberation at significant levels. It appears that many of the trends and behaviors Mutz identifies in face-to-face interaction apply to digital interaction as well. (shrink)

In this article, focusing on the building blocks of art with its concomitant role and meaning, we commence with a brief evolutionary overview of the origin of land vertebrates, which culminated in the rise of our species as we view it. We then review three iconic phases of human evolution, colloquially designated as the Neanderthals, the San and the Cro-Magnons, as manifested by their artistic endeavours. We are well aware that the Cro-Magnons are currently regarded as not sufficiently distinct from (...) modern Homo sapiens to be separately designated. Therefore, the terms ‘anatomically modern humans’ or ‘early modern humans’ are suggested for these inhabitants of the Upper Palaeolithic as they shared an anatomical resemblance with us but still lacked the full complement of behavioural attributes that typify ourselves. This particular selection was chosen because these groups have partially overlapped historically, yet each represents a distinctive approach to the artistic impulse. Subsequently, we consider more contemporary developments regarding human art intertwined with our interpretation of art’s role and meaning. Then, we briefly discuss a broader account of the evolution of art in which these three phases are firmly based and through which our understanding of and engagement with the evolutionary development of these stages are elucidated and complemented. In conclusion, particular views about language and the role and meaning of art are confirmed. Particular views about language and the role and meaning of art are endorsed and supplemented by an extensive body of relevant literature.Contribution: This article explores the evolution of art and its accompanying role and meaning in an intersectional and interdisciplinary manner that fits well with the intention of this unique collection on the building blocks of our past, present and future and with the nature of this journal and our ongoing engagement with HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. (shrink)

This article examines the role of physical education in the process of moral education, and argues that physical education is a necessary prerequisite for the possibility of human virtue. This discussion is divided into four parts. First, I examine the nature of morality and moral decision-making. Drawing on the moral theories presented by Plato, Aristotle and Kant, I argue that morality is connected with reason and the attainment of objectively good goals. Second, I examine the role of moral education in (...) helping individuals to cultivate a virtuous character state. I outline the approaches to moral education taken by Plato, Aristotle and Kant—dialectic, dogmatic and catechistic—and examine the ability of each approach to develop the appropriate moral disposition within individuals. Third, I examine the cultivation of this disposition by considering the connection between virtue and happiness and the possibility of producing an individual who is both virtuous and happy through moral education. Fourth, although there is disagreement about the means of moral education, I argue that there must be agreement concerning one necessary component of moral education: physical education. Physical education, while connected to non-moral exercises, allows individuals to develop the strength to become apathetic to bodily desires (e.g. the desire to obtain pleasure or pursue pain), desires that lead them away from virtue. (shrink)

We explore the science of mass extinction, link it to industrial civilization, use the concept of the banality of evil to explain the ethical situation, and then explain the various ways in which mass extinction poses further ethical problems within that situation, especially of environmental justice and the loss of value. Overall, humankind risks a profound failure of autonomy, perhaps our greatest achievement. For those who want to take action, we recommend the project of anthroponomy and large-unit/deep-branching conservation.

Cochrane has developed a linked data infrastructure to make the evidence and data from its rich repositories more discoverable to facilitate evidence-based health decision-making. These annotated resources can enhance the study and understanding of biomarkers and surrogate endpoints.

Building upon his previous books about Marx, Hayek, and Rand, _Total Freedom_ completes what _Lingua Franca_ has called Sciabarra’s "epic scholarly quest" to reclaim dialectics, usually associated with the Marxian left, as a methodology that can revivify libertarian thought. Part One surveys the history of dialectics from the ancient Greeks through the Austrian school of economics. Part Two investigates in detail the work of Murray Rothbard as a leading modern libertarian, in whose thought Sciabarra finds both dialectical and nondialectical elements. (...) Ultimately, Sciabarra aims for a dialectical-libertarian synthesis, highlighting the need to think of the "totality" of interconnections in a dynamic system as the way to ensure human freedom while avoiding "totalitarianism". (shrink)

As the global prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease increases, the need to understand family caregiving becomes increasingly pressing. I argue that there is an under-recognized form of caregiving for people with early to mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease. This type of caregiving involves, roughly, helping people reason through their values. It arises along with the loss of the capacity for executive functioning. Moreover, it is prone to give rise to moral distress, which is an under-recognized vulnerability in family caregiving. Categories of family caregiving (...) thus need to be expanded, and moral distress needs to be recognized not only in the context of nursing. (shrink)

In this essay, I reply to the above four critics of In Defense of Kant’s Religion (IDKR). In reply to George di Giovanni, I highlight the interpretive differencesthat divide the authors of IDKR and di Giovanni, and argue that di Giovanni’s atheist reading of Kant does not follow, even granting his premises. In reply to Pamela Sue Anderson, I show that if her reading of Kant is accurate, Kant’s own talk of God becomes empty and contemptible by his own lights, (...) and I then show how her empirical bias prompts a significant misreading of IDKR. In reply to Stephen Palmquist, I expose four fallacious maneuvers in his paper, which comprise the bulk of his essay. And in reply to Michalson, I address a series of minor concerns raised in his essay, and then set the record straight on the motives behind IDKR in general and my own take on Kant’s compatibility (or lack thereof) with Christianity in specific. (shrink)

A letter to the editor from Françoise Baylis and Chris Kaposy concerning the recent commentary by Toby Schonfeld and colleagues , which was written in response to Baylis and Kaposy’s article.

How can digitised assets of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums be reused to unlock new value? What are the implications of viewing large-scale cultural heritage data as an economic resource, to build new products and services upon? Drawing upon valuation studies, we reflect on both the theory and practicalities of using mass-digitised heritage content as an economic driver, stressing the need to consider the complexity of commercial-based outcomes within the context of cultural and creative industries. However, we also problematise the (...) act of considering such heritage content as a resource to be exploited for economic growth, in order to inform how we consider, develop, deliver and value mass-digitisation. Our research will be of interest to those wishing to understand a rapidly changing research and innovation landscape, those considering how to engage memory institutions in data-driven activities and those critically evaluating years of mass-digitisation across the heritage sector. (shrink)

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

Judgments of character traits tend to be overcorrelated, a bias known as the halo effect. We conducted two studies to test an explanation of the effect based on shared lexical context and connotation. Study 1 tested whether the context similarity of trait names could explain 39 participants’ ratings of the probability that two traits would co-occur. Over 126 trait pairs, cosine similarity between the word2vec vectors of the two words was a reliable predictor of the human judgments of trait co-occurrence (...) probability (cross-validated r2 =.19, p <.001). Two measures related to word similarity increased the variation accounted for in the human judgments to 45%, cross-validated (p <.001). In Experiment 2, 40 different participants judged similarity of word meaning within the pairs, confirming that the word pairs were not simply synonymous (Average [SD] = 40.8/100 [13.1/100]). Shared lexical context and word connotation play a role in shaping the halo effect. (shrink)

Written in an engaging narrative style these philosophical investigations undermine racist hierarchies along with false natualistic conceptions of the meanings of race and universalistic understandings of gender, by considering whiteness as it shapes and is infused by gender, class, sexuality, and culture. Central to this project are questions about how it is that culture and the state create such a wide range of different people who understand themselves as white. The essays collected here discuss how one learns to be a (...) good white Southern woman, what it means to pass as white, and whether there really is a dilemma that accompanies white privilege. (shrink)

In this paper I borrow from Maria Lugones’ work on playful “world-traveling” and W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of “double consciousness” to make the case that humor can facilitate an openness and cooperative attitude among an otherwise closed, even adversarial audience. I focus on what I call “subversive” humor, that which is employed by or on behalf of those who have been continually marginalized. When effectively used, such humor can foster the inclination and even desire to listen to others and, if (...) only for brief moments, adopt their point of view. To be able to see oneself as others see you can also be a desirable capacity, because along with such multidimensional seeing comes an epistemic advantage lacking in those who have no need nor desire to see as others do, especially if the vision of the others happens to be from below where one perceives that the promises of our explicit ideals are constantly being implicitly broken. Such humor is aesthetic, pleasurable in and of itself, and not amenable to scientific dissection. But it is also a skill that can be honed into a powerful tool of persuasion in circumstances where straightforward arguments are less effective. It can raise consciousness about the lived experiences of those suffering under systemic oppression and foster world travelling. Subversive humor encourages audiences, especially those who contribute to what Jean Harvey calls “civilized oppression”, to playfully travel across worlds and “tarry along” with the perspectives of the marginalized. (shrink)

To build an argument--and particularly an argument presented as a monologue--a writer must assemble and marshal a battery of supports for a claim. Some of those supports will be arranged in convergent structures, some as linked; some will be expressed, some will be left implicit; sometimes a support will need further support of its own--and sometimes, not. This paper explores the factors which lead a writer to make particular choices, the interactions between those factors, and the constraints on a w (...) riter's freedom in exercising her power, drawing on recent findings in computational modelling of the generation process. (shrink)

It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there (...) is no relevant counterevidence. This piece is an introduction to a volume dedicated to the question of what the connection is between seemings and justified belief: under what conditions, if any, can a seeming justify its content? (shrink)