The Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) do not currently address brain death (BD) or medical, professional, and conscience objections. Accordingly, Catholic practitioners, patients, and their families are continually caught in the controversies and confusion surrounding BD and the organ procurement process. Therefore, this essay petitions the US bishops to include a new directive in the next edition of the ERDs that (1) recognizes the moral uncertainty and dubious medical practice surrounding BD and (2) allows families and surrogates and practitioners to (...) object—based on conscience, on medical or professional grounds, and via informed refusal— to the BD tests or (at least) the BD organ procurement process. This essay provides justification for such a directive, proposes potential language, and explores how it could look in practice. (shrink)

How is the debate between endurantism and perdurantism affected by the transition from pre-relativistic spacetimes to relativistic ones? After suggesting that the endurance vs. perdurance distinction may run together a pair of cross-cutting distinctions, I discuss two recent attempts to show that the transition in question does serious damage to endurantism.

I formulate a theory of persistence in the endurantist family and pose a problem for the conjunction of this theory with orthodox versions of special or general relativity. The problem centers around the question: Where are things?

Do Russellian propositions have their constituents as parts? One reason for thinking not is that if they did, they would generate apparent counterexamples to plausible mereological principles. As Frege noted, they would be in tension with the transitivity of parthood. A certain small rock is a part of Etna but not of the proposition that Etna is higher than Vesuvius. So, if Etna were a part of the given proposition, parthood would fail to be transitive. As William Bynoe has noted (...) (speaking of facts rather than propositions), they would seem to violate certain supplementation principles. Consider the singular proposition, concerning identity, that it is identical with itself. Given the relevant form of Russellianism, this proposition would have identity as a proper part, but it would not have any parts disjoint from identity, and indeed it would not have even a single pair of disjoint parts, in violation of various supplementation principles. This chapter offers a unified solution to the problems about transitivity and supplementation. One key ingredient in the solution is the view that parthood is a four-place relation expressed by ‘x at y is a part of z at w’. Another key ingredient is the view that the semantic contents of predicates and sentential connectives have ‘slots’ or ‘argument positions’ in them. (Both ingredients are independently motivated elsewhere.) Four-place analogues of the transitivity and supplementation principles are set out, and it is argued that these are not threatened by the examples from Frege and Bynoe. (shrink)

We introduce a natural two-cardinal version of Bagaria’s sequence of derived topologies on ordinals. We prove that for our sequence of two-cardinal derived topologies, limit points of sets can be characterized in terms of a new iterated form of pairwise simultaneous reflection of certain kinds of stationary sets, the first few instances of which are often equivalent to notions related to strong stationarity, which has been studied previously in the context of strongly normal ideals. The non-discreteness of these two-cardinal derived (...) topologies can be obtained from certain two-cardinal indescribability hypotheses, which follow from local instances of supercompactness. Additionally, we answer several questions posed by the first author, Holy and White on the relationship between Ramseyness and indescribability in both the cardinal context and in the two-cardinal context. (shrink)

Slot theory is the view that (i) there exist such entities as argument places, or ‘slots’, in universals, and that (ii) a universal u is n-adic if and only if there are n slots in u. I argue that those who take properties and relations to be abundant, fine-grained, non-set-theoretical entities face pressure to be slot theorists. I note that slots permit a natural account of the notion of adicy. I then consider a series of ‘slot-free’ accounts of that notion (...) and argue that each of them has significant drawbacks. (shrink)

Augmented reality (AR) technologies function to ‘augment’ normal perception by superimposing virtual objects onto an agent’s visual field. The philosophy of augmented reality is a small but growing subfield within the philosophy of technology. Existing work in this subfield includes research on the phenomenology of augmented experiences, the metaphysics of virtual objects, and different ethical issues associated with AR systems, including (but not limited to) issues of privacy, property rights, ownership, trust, and informed consent. This paper addresses some epistemological issues (...) posed by AR systems. I focus on a near-future version of AR technology called the Real-World Web, which promises to radically transform the nature of our relationship to digital information by mixing the virtual with the physical. I argue that the Real-World Web (RWW) threatens to exacerbate three existing epistemic problems in the digital age: the problem of digital distraction, the problem of digital deception, and the problem of digital divergence. The RWW is poised to present new versions of these problems in the form of what I call the augmented attention economy, augmented skepticism, and the problem of other augmented minds. The paper draws on a range of empirical research on AR and offers a phenomenological analysis of virtual objects as perceptual affordances to help ground and guide the speculative nature of the discussion. It also considers a few policy-based and designed-based proposals to mitigate the epistemic threats posed by AR technology. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on AI-based cognitive and perceptual enhancements. AI-based brain enhancements are already under development, and they may become commonplace over the next 30–50 years. We raise doubts concerning whether radical AI-based enhancements transhumanists advocate will accomplish the transhumanists goals of longevity, human flourishing, and intelligence enhancement. We urge that even if the technologies are medically safe and are not used as tools by surveillance capitalism or an authoritarian dictatorship, these enhancements may still fail to do their job for (...) philosophical reasons. In what follows, we explore one such concern, a problem that involves the nature of the self. We illustrate that the so called transhumanist efforts to “merge oneself with AI” could lead to perverse realizations of AI technology, such as the demise of the person who sought enhancement. And, in a positive vein, we offer ways to avoid this, at least within the context of one theory of the nature of personhood. (shrink)

We investigate properties of the ineffability and the Ramsey operator, and a common generalization of those that was introduced by the second author, with respect to higher indescribability, as introduced by the first author. This extends earlier investigations on the ineffability operator by James Baumgartner, and on the Ramsey operator by Qi Feng, by Philip Welch et al., and by the first author.

Many philosophers have thought that the problem of personal identity over time is not metaphysically deep. Perhaps the debate between the rival theories is somehow empty or is a ‘merely verbal dispute’. Perhaps questions about personal identity are ‘nonsubstantive’ and fit more for conceptual analysis and close attention to usage than for theorizing in the style of serious metaphysics, theorizing guided by considerations of systematicity, parsimony, explanatory power, and aiming for knowledge about the objective structure of the world. I discuss (...) a thesis about consciousness according to which there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties. Although I do not argue for this thesis, I believe that it is plausible, whether or not physicalism is true. Given the thesis, there are deep, substantive questions about which individuals or pluralities instantiate the relevant phenomenal properties. Equally substantive questions can then be asked about the duration and other spatiotemporal characteristics of those individuals or pluralities, both in actual cases and in hypothetical puzzle cases adapted from the personal identity literature. I suggest that, at least prima facie, these questions interact with our future-directed egoistic concern in much the same way that the personal identity question is often thought to. As a slogan: “you give me substantive, determinate facts about consciousness; I give you substantive, determinate facts about personal identity”. (shrink)

Existing puzzles about coinciding objects can be divided into two types, corresponding to the manner in which they bear upon the endurantism v. perdurantism debate. Puzzles of the first type, which involve temporary spatial co-location, can be solved simply by abandoning endurantism in favor of perdurantism, whereas those of the second type, which involve career-long spatial co-location, remain equally puzzling on both views. I show that the possibility of backward time travel would give rise to a new type of puzzle. (...) The new puzzles confront perdurantists and can be solved just by shifting to endurantism. (shrink)

We introduce reflection properties of cardinals in which the attributes that reflect are expressible by infinitary formulas whose lengths can be strictly larger than the cardinal under consideration. This kind of generalized reflection principle leads to the definitions of [Formula: see text]-indescribability and [Formula: see text]-indescribability of a cardinal [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text]. In this context, universal [Formula: see text] formulas exist, there is a normal ideal associated to [Formula: see text]-indescribability and the notions of [Formula: (...) see text]-indescribability yield a strict hierarchy below a subtle cardinal. Additionally, given a regular cardinal [Formula: see text], we introduce a diagonal version of Cantor’s derivative operator and use it to extend Bagaria’s [Derived topologies on ordinals and stationary reflection, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 371(3) (2019) 1981–2002] sequence [Formula: see text] of derived topologies on [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text]. Finally, we prove that for all [Formula: see text], if there is a stationary set of [Formula: see text] that have a high enough degree of indescribability, then there are stationarily many [Formula: see text] that are nonisolated points in the space [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

This article analyses teaching reflection skills as a means to inculcate students’ capacity to contribute to justice. Arising out of understandings of professionalism, the rule of law, as well as m...

On reading David Chalmers's book, The Conscious Mind (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), one is struck by the author's efforts to meet the difficulties and obscurities in understanding the human mind, as indeed most other philosophers have, by hazarding theories. Such undertakings rest on two broad, usually unexamined, assumptions. One is that we have direct access to our conscious minds such that pronouncements about it and its contents are descriptive. The other is that our actions have causal explanations which (...) incorporate beliefs, intentions, desires, etc . (propositional attitudes) as functional elements. These assumptions are questioned in this essay. They rest upon a notion of data which is out of place in explicating the mind. The conclusion reached is that we do not know our own minds because there are no data upon which such knowledge might be founded, and, consequently, there can be no responsible theories of mind. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLegal ethics teaching can be enriched and deepened when students experience legal practice through, for example, client interviews. Further, many legal educators are committed to encouraging their students’ commitment to contribute to the community through making the law and legal system fairer. One means of achieving this goal is by introducing a clinical component into a legal ethics course. Empirical research conducted with current students in Australia, analyses students’ changing understandings of ethical values and practice when conducting legal interviews. The (...) article discusses the relationship between an ‘ethic of care’ and concepts of ‘justice’, examined through students’ experiences of client interviewing. It also examines students’ commitment to the justice system, including the finding that their commitment to making law fairer is reinforced through working with disadvantaged clients. (shrink)

Man's belief in God is often contrasted with man's disbelief, Atheism; but the nature of human belief is contrastable with the nature of the belief of demons. A point of contrast lies in the consequences of the different sort of reasons men and demons must be understood to have. One consequence has to do with the vision of the world, seeing the world as God's creation, which men are expected to achieve and demons are not. The logic of the ?seeing (...) as? formula is explored and found wanting even though it seems inescapable in connection with human belief. In the end human belief appears more peculiar than demonic. (shrink)

We determine the large cardinal consistency strength of the existence of a λ-supercompact cardinal κ such that equation image fails at λ. Indeed, we show that the existence of a λ-supercompact cardinal κ such that 2λ ≥ θ is equiconsistent with the existence of a λ-supercompact cardinal that is also θ-tall. We also prove some basic facts about the large cardinal notion of tallness with closure.

We review four constraints we judge to be necessary to the high-fidelity apprehension and description of inner experience: cleaving to specific moments, cleaving to pristine inner experience, ….

Immanent universals, being wholly present wherever they are instantiated, are capable of both multi-location and co-location. As a result, they can become involved in some bizarre situations, situations whose contradictory appearance cannot be dispelled by any of the relativizing maneuvers familiar to metaphysicials as solutions to the problem of change. Douglas Ehring takes this to be a fatal problem for immanent universals, but I do not. Although the old relativizing maneuvers don't solve the problem, I propose a new one that (...) does. I spend half the paper defending the proposed solution against objections, and in the course of this task I touch upon such topics as backward time travel and the distinction between universals and particulars. I close by putting forward -- merely as an option -- a new way to draw the distinction in question. (shrink)

Science education researchers have long advocated the central role of the nature of science for our understanding of scientific literacy. NOS is often interpreted narrowly to refer to a host of epistemological issues associated with the process of science and the limitations of scientific knowledge. Despite its importance, practitioners and researchers alike acknowledge that students have difficulty learning NOS and that this in part reflects how difficult it is to teach. One particularly promising method for teaching NOS involves an explicit (...) and reflective approach using the history of science. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of a historically based genetics unit on undergraduates’ understanding of NOS. The three-class unit developed for this study introduces students to Mendelian genetics using the story of Gregor Mendel’s work. NOS learning objectives were emphasized through discussion questions and investigations. The unit was administered to undergraduates in an introductory biology course for pre-service elementary teachers. The influence of the unit was determined by students’ responses to the SUSSI instrument, which was administered pre- and post-intervention. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted that focused on changes in students’ responses from pre- to post-test. Data collected indicated that students showed improved NOS understanding related to observations, inferences, and the influence of culture on science. (shrink)

Relativity theory is often said to support something called ‘the four-dimensional view of reality’. But there are at least three different views that sometimes go by this name. One is ‘spacetime unitism’, according to which there is a spacetime manifold, and if there are such things as points of space or instants of time, these are just spacetime regions of different sorts: thus space and time are not separate manifolds. A second is the B-theory of time, according to which the (...) past, present, and future are all equally real and there is nothing metaphysically special about the present. A third is perdurantism, according to which persisting material objects are made up of different temporal parts located at different times. We sketch routes from relativity to unitism and to the B-theory. We then discuss some routes to perdurantism, via the B-theory and via unitism. (shrink)

Through a selection of primary sources, this article demonstrates the political and legal languages which articulated monarchist ideas in interwar Yugoslavia. Variations on the theme emerged in different periods. First, the national and so democratic character of the monarch and monarchy was a prevalent image at the end of the First World War and in the first decade of the Yugoslav state’s existence. During the domestic political crises in the second half of the 1920s, the language of monarchism shifted toward (...) discourses of stability and public order. After the declaration of the royal dictatorship in January 1929, the language of monarchism became fully invested in expressing the monarch’s absolute political authority, legally inviolable character, and the resulting ‘unity of state and nation’. For the political Right, the king embodied the spirit of integral Yugoslavism. While the language of monarchism could serve disparate political ideologies – as in the liberal monarchist emigration after spring 1941 – it was rather primarily linked to the political visions of the Right in the final decade of interwar Yugoslavia. (shrink)

The binary remember/know task requires participants to dichotomize their subjective recognition experiences into those with recollection and those only with familiarity. Many variables have produced dissociative effects on remember/know judgments. In contrast, having participants make independent recollection/familiarity ratings has consistently produced parallel effects, suggesting the dissociations may be artifacts of using binary judgments. Bodner and Lindsay reported a test-list context effect with binary judgments: Increased remembering but decreased knowing for a set of critical items tested with a set of less-memorable (...) items. Here we report a parallel effect of test-list context on recollection and familiarity ratings, induced by a shift in response bias. We argue that independent ratings are preferable to binary judgments because they allow participants to directly report the co-occurrence of recollection and familiarity for each item. Implications for the measurement of self-reported recognition experiences, and for accounts of recognition memory, are discussed. (shrink)

David Lewis defends the following "non-circular definition of personhood": "something is a continuant person if and only if it is a maximal R-interrelated aggregate of person-stages. That is: if and only if it is an aggregate of person-stages, each of which is R-related to all the rest (and to itself), and it is a proper part of no other such aggregate." I give a counterexample, involving a person who is a part of another, much larger person, with a separate mental (...) life. I then offer an easy repair, which preserves the virtues of Lewis's definition without introducing any new vices. (shrink)

Ned Markosian has recently defended a new theory of composition, which he calls regionalism : some material objects xx compose something if and only if there is a material object located at the fusion of the locations of xx. Markosian argues that regionalism follows from what he calls the subregion theory of parthood. Korman and Carmichael agree. We provide countermodels to show that regionalism does not follow from, even together with fourteen potentially implicit background principles. We then show that regionalism (...) does follow from five of those background principles together with and two additional principles connecting parthood and location, which we call and. While the additional principles are not uncontroversial, our conjecture is that many will find them attractive. We conclude by mentioning that fills a previously unnoticed gap in the formal theory of location presented in Parsons. (shrink)

Yuri Balashov has argued that endurantism isuntenable in the context of Minkowskispacetime. Balashov's argument runs through twomain theses concerning the relation ofcoexistence, or temporal co-location. (1)Coexistence must turn out to be an absolute or objective matter; and inMinkowski spacetime coexistence must begrounded in the relation of spacelikeseparation. (2) If endurantism is true, then(1) leads to absurd conclusions; but ifperdurantism is true, then (1) is harmless. Iobject to both theses. Against (1), I arguethat coexistence is better construed as beingrelative to a (...) hyperplane of simultaneity.Against (2), I argue that the consequences of(1) given endurantism are no worse than theconsequences of (1) given perdurantism. (shrink)

According to what Barry Dainton calls the 'Strong Introspectibility thesis', it is a necessary truth that mental states S and S* are co-conscious (experienced together) if and only if they are 'jointly introspectible', i.e., if and only if it is possible for there to be some single state of introspective awareness that represents both S and S*. Dainton offers two arguments for the conclusion that joint introspectibility is unnecessary for co-consciousness. In these comments I attempt to show, first, that Dainton's (...) arguments fail, and, second, that joint introspectibility is actually insufficient for co-consciousness. (As to whether it is also unnecessary, I take no stance.). (shrink)

I formulate an account, in terms of essence and ground, that explains why atomic Russellian propositions have the truth conditions they do. The key ideas are that (i) atomic propositions are just 0-adic relations, (ii) truth is just the 1-adic version of the instantiation (or, as I will say, holding) relation (Menzel 1993: 86, note 27), and (iii) atomic propositions have the truth conditions they do for basically the same reasons that partially plugged relations, like being an x and a (...) y such that Philip gave x to y, have the holding conditions they do. The account is meant to be mainly of intrinsic interest, but I hope that it goes some distance toward answering an objection to classical theories of propositions put forward by King (2014), who writes that ‘since the classical conception of propositions as things that have truth conditions by their very natures and independently of minds and languages is incapable of explaining how or why propositions have truth conditions, it is unacceptable’ (2014: 47). Propositions do have their truth conditions ‘by their very natures’ and ‘independently of minds and languages’. But a fact about a given entity can hold by the very nature of that entity without being a fundamental fact. I argue that this is plausibly the case for atomic Russellian propositions and the facts about their truth conditions. A fact about the truth conditions of such a proposition holds by the very nature of the given proposition but is metaphysically grounded in facts about that proposition’s parts and their essences. If my account is correct, then the supposedly intractable problem of explaining why the given propositions have the truth conditions they do reduces to the problem of explaining why relations have the holding essences they do, which few seem to have found worrisome . (shrink)

It seems to have been taken for granted that we all know what a human action is. However in attempting to draw from what philosophers have said about actions the necessary clues as to their distinguishing features, one finds little to discourage the idea that there is no way of distinguishing one category of occurrences, human actions, from the complex of different sorts of things which happen. From this I am tempted to conclude that there is no category of human (...) action. But before drawing such a conclusion an ancient but terrible question must be faced: What sorts of things happen in the world ? This ancient question is faced but not answered. It is brought up because the failure to find a satisfactory answer to the question, Is human action a category? is a failure even to find a satisfactory assumption about what kind of reference the term ?human action? is supposed to have. (shrink)

This bibliography is the most comprehensive compilation of Jacques Rancière's published works to date. It is not intended, however, to be the definitive catalogue of his intellectual output. In the first instance, it does not include works and interviews published in languages other than French and English. Some publications, particularly shorter works in French periodicals, have not been included, and a few of the more obscure publications listed below have been confirmed only through their appearance in secondary sources. Unpublished materials, (...) such as the rapidly expanding collection of sanctioned and unsanctioned videorecordings of Rancière's lectures available online, have not, with a few notable exceptions, been included. (shrink)

BackgroundAs opioid use disorder (OUD) incidence and its associated deaths continue to persist at elevated rates, the development of novel treatment modalities is warranted. Recent strides in this therapeutic area include novel anti-opioid vaccine approaches. This work compares logistical and ethical considerations surrounding currently available interventions for opioid use disorder with an anti-opioid vaccine approach.MethodsThe opinions of student pharmacists and practicing pharmacists assessing knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes toward current and future OUD management strategies were characterized using a staged, multi-modal research (...) approach incorporating a focus group, pilot survey development and refinement, and final survey deployment. Survey responses were assessed using one- and two-way parametric and non-parametric analyses where appropriate, and multi-dimensional matrix profiles were compared using z-tests following an exhaustive combinatorial sum of differences calculation between items within each compared matrix.ResultsFocus group content analysis revealed a high level of agreeableness among participants regarding anti-opioid vaccine technology and a sense of shared ownership regarding solutions to the opioid epidemic at large. Pilot survey results demonstrated subject ability to consider both pragmatic and ethical considerations related to current therapeutics and novel interventions in a single instrument, with high endurance amongst engaged subjects. Access inequality was the most concerning ethical consideration identified for anti-opioid vaccines. Support for anti-opioid vaccine implementation across various clinical scenarios was strongest for voluntary use amongst individuals in recovery, and lowest for mandatory use in at-risk individuals.ConclusionsEthical and logistical concerns surrounding anti-opioid vaccines were largely similar to those for current OUD therapeutics overall. Anti-opioid vaccines were endorsed as helpful potential additions to current OUD therapeutic approaches, particularly for voluntary use in the later stages of clinical progression. (shrink)

This paper engages in what might be called anticipatory virtue epistemology, as it anticipates some virtue epistemological risks related to a near-future version of brain-computer interface technology that Michael Lynch (2014) calls 'neuromedia.' I analyze how neuromedia is poised to negatively affect the intellectual character of agents, focusing specifically on the virtue of intellectual perseverance, which involves a disposition to mentally persist in the face of challenges towards the realization of one’s intellectual goals. First, I present and motivate what I (...) call ‘the cognitive offloading argument’, which holds that excessive cognitive offloading of the sort incentivized by a device like neuromedia threatens to undermine intellectual virtue development from the standpoint of the theory of virtue responsibilism. Then, I examine the cognitive offloading argument as it applies to the virtue of intellectual perseverance, arguing that neuromedia may increase cognitive efficiency at the cost of intellectual perseverance. If used in an epistemically responsible manner, however, cognitive offloading devices may not undermine intellectual perseverance but instead allow us to persevere with respect to intellectual goals that we find more valuable by freeing us from different kinds of menial intellectual labor. (shrink)