It has been widely noted that Humean supervenience , according to which everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them, is at odds with the nonlocal character of quantum mechanics, according to which not everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them. In particular, a standard view is that the parts of a composite quantum system instantiate further relations which are not accounted for in Lewis's Humean mosaic. But (...) that suggests a simple solution: Why couldn't Lewis simply add these new relations to the supervenience basis? The aim of this article is to use Humean supervenience as a foil to spell out a feature of entanglement of general metaphysical interest: The way in which the metaphysical lessons drawn for two-party systems ramify when systems of many parties are considered. The main conclusion is that the proposed simple fix in fact results in a supervenience thesis different in kind from Lewis's, by making the relations in the supervenience basis global in a certain sense. (shrink)

Explanatory accounts of emotion require, among other things, theoretically tractable representations of emotional experience. Common methods for producing such representations have well-known drawbacks, such as observer interference or lack of ecological validity. Literature offers a valuable supplement. It provides detailed instructions for simulating emotions; when successful, it induces empathic emotions. It too involves distortions, through emotion-intensifying idealization and ideological biases. But these also relate to emotion study. There are three levels at which literature bears on emotion research: (1) the individual (...) work; (2) generic and related patterns; and (3) properties found widely across individual works and genres. Even at the third, most general level, literature suggests potentially important hypotheses about our pleasure in emotional simulation and our need to share emotional experiences. (shrink)

Moral and legal responsibility is diminished in neuropsychiatric patients who lack the capacity to use reasoning to determine morally appropriate behavior. Patients with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), however, develop immoral behaviors as a result of their disease despite the ability to explicitly state that their behavior is wrong. In order to determine whether bvFTD patients should be held responsible for their immoral behavior, we begin by discussing the philosophical concepts of free will, determinism, and responsibility. Those who believe in both (...) determinism and free will are called compatibilists. We argue that reason-responsiveness, a specific type of compatibilism, cannot fully determine responsibility in bvFTD patients if reason-responsiveness is considered to be a single, unified concept. Instead, we argue that several different neuropsychological capacities, including many that are impaired in bvFTD patients, contribute to a patient's ability to respond to certain reasons in specific situations. Finally, we propose a new framework for understanding reason-responsiveness, using case examples to illustrate how this model can be used to determine responsibility in neuropsychiatric patients. (shrink)

According to Lewis's modal realism, all ways the world could be are represented by possible worlds, and all possible worlds represent some way the world could be. That there are just the right possible worlds to represent all and only the ways the world could be is to be guaranteed by the principle of recombination. Lewis sketches the principle (put roughly: anything can co-exist with anything else), but does not spell out a precise version that generates just the right possibilities. (...) David Efird and Tom Stoneham have offered a principle that aims to do just that.In this paper, we argue that Efird's and Stoneham's principle of recombination is not successful – it fails to generate the right possibilities – but we also suggest ways that their account might be improved to solve the problem we raise. We also argue against Efird's and Stoneham's claim that the correct principle of recombination demonstrates the possibility of nothing concrete – it is true that their principle of recombination has models consistent with the existence of an empty world, but we only get the possibility of nothing if mereologically null individuals are possible. The Lewisian should only think mereologically null individuals are possible if he or she has some independent reason for believing in the possibility of an empty world, so the principle of recombination provides no new evidence for that possibility. We draw some morals from this for the correct way to formulate the principle of recombination. (shrink)

This paper concerns metaphysical indeterminacy and, in particular, the issue of whether quantum mechanics gives motivation for thinking the world contains it. In a previous paper (Darby G, Pickup M. Synthese 198:1685–1710, 2021), we have offered one way to think about metaphysical indeterminacy which we take to avoid some issues arising from certain features of quantum mechanics (such as the Kochen-Specker theorem). This approach has recently been criticised by Corti (Synthese, forthcoming), and we take this opportunity to respond. Our (...) paper will therefore reply to Corti’s argument, but we also take it as a case study in ‘naturalistic metaphysics’ and hence to contribute to a more general discussion of the relationship between philosophy of science and analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Margaret Monahan Hogan; Catholic Health Care Institutions: Dinosaurs Awaiting Extinction or Safe Refuge in a Culture of Death, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenic.

The principle of the child's right to an open future was first proposed by the legal philosopher Joel Feinberg and developed further by bioethicist Dena Davis. The principle holds that children possess a unique class of rights called rights in trust—rights that they cannot yet exercise, but which they will be able to exercise when they reach maturity. Parents should not, therefore, take actions that permanently foreclose on or pre-empt the future options of their children, but leave them the greatest (...) possible scope for exercising personal life choices in adulthood. Davis particularly applies the principle to genetic counselling, arguing that parents should not take deliberate steps to create physically abnormal children, and to religion, arguing that while parents are entitled to bring their children up in accordance with their own values, they are not entitled to inflict physical or mental harm, neither by omission nor commission. In this paper, I aim to elucidate the open future principle, and consider whether it is applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision of boys, whether performed for cultural/religious or for prophylactic/health reasons. I argue that the principle is highly applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision, and conclude that non-therapeutic circumcision would be a violation of the child's right to an open future, and thus objectionable from both an ethical and a human rights perspective. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the consequences of quantum entanglement for the mainstream metaphysician. The basic idea that entanglement has metaphysical consequences in the form of some kind of “holism” is familiar in the philosophy of physics literature, and finds its way into recent metaphysics, in discussions of failure of Humean supervenience, monism and emergence, for example. The principle aim here is to highlight some questions of detail that occur when attempting to make contact with those metaphysical debates as they (...) occur in the metaphysics literature-details that matter less when the aim is just to show that there is some novelty in entanglement, but more when articulating its precise nature. The conclusion is broadly that the differences are not as great as is sometimes supposed between entanglement and more familiar phenomena already accommodated in prominent metaphysical schemes. (shrink)

To better understand engagement, I offer a perspective of social justice that understands context and history. Tying in pragmatism into social justice is a foundational step to better understand the inner working of a community. We must acknowledge we can change the environment, have dialogue and actively reflect, and understand what works one place might not work somewhere else. In this article, the notions of pragmatism and social justice are discussed. Following is a building of a pragmatic social justice framework. (...) This notion is in support to how practitioners can potentially engage in pragmatic social justice. (shrink)

We cannot think seriously on the importance of this subject without being horrified at some of its suggested implications. What makes it so baffling is the difficulty of discriminating between what is positive, negative and purely hypothetical in the current estimates. The idea of a nuclear war which, as we are told by men of the highest eminence in the natural sciences, would condemn the whole of mankind to extinction, dislocates our sense of reality. Man, it is true, is not (...) a necessary being; the mortality of his individual existence is an image of the human condition generally. The transmission of humanity as a historical fact is something we accept as not merely fortuitous but as imposed, at the biological level, in the evidence of cumulative experience. This by itself is not conclusive as regards the continuity of the human race. On the biological record the number of forms that have survived is infinitesimal as compared with those that have become extinct. (shrink)

That Claudian imitates Virgil's Georgics in the De raptu Proserpinae is well known. Most of his allusions are restricted to Golden Age or Underworld imagery, largely from Books 1, 2, and 4. However, one imitation of the third Georgic that appears not to have been noted previously occurs at De raptu Proserpinae 1.82. The context is Claudian's famous description of Pluto enthroned: ipse rudi fultus solio nigraque uerendusmaiestate sedet: squalent inmania foedosceptra situ; sublime caput maestissima nubesasperat et dirae riget inclementia (...) formae;terrorem dolor augebat. I argue that this recalls the following passage in Virgil: optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aeuiprima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectuset labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis. Inclementia occurs some twenty times in extant classical and late antique Latin verse. Claudian himself uses it three other times. None the less, the construction of Claudian's line makes it clear that the line from the Georgics is being imitated here: the lines are metrically equivalent, and the sound-pattern and identical grammatical structure make the imitation unmistakable. (shrink)

Human rights are one of the great civilizing projects of modernity. From their formal promulgation in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to their subsequent embrace by the newly independent states of Africa, human rights have emerged as the primary discourse of global politics and as an increasingly prominent category in the international and domestic legal system. In the theological realm, the concept of human rights has all but replaced its antecedent, natural rights, while in the world of (...) Christian social engagement the language of human rights has become the lingua franca of political action. But within theological circles, human rights continue to be both controversial and contested. Some skeptics contend that human rights reflect individualism, secularity, and Western political imperialism in disguise. Hogan, though, thinks human rights language is worth defending and tries to re-envision it. Avoiding claims of universal values, she draws on the constructivist strand of political philosophy to argue that human rights are best conceived in a three-fold manner: requirements for human flourishing; reflecting the needs of the community; and as emancipatory politics. (shrink)

There has been recent interest in formulating theories of non-representational indeterminacy. The aim of this paper is to clarify the relevance of quantum mechanics to this project. Quantum-mechanical examples of vague objects have been offered by various authors, displaying indeterminate identity, in the face of the famous Evans argument that such an idea is incoherent. It has also been suggested that the quantum-mechanical treatment of state-dependent properties exhibits metaphysical indeterminacy. In both cases it is important to consider the details of (...) the metaphysical account and the way in which the quantum phenomenon is captured within it. Indeed if we adopt a familiar way of thinking about indeterminacy and apply it in a natural way to quantum mechanics, we run into illuminating difficulties and see that the case is far less straightforward than might be hoped. (shrink)

In "Confronting the Truth", Hogan gives readers a balanced, clearly written examination of conscience in the Catholic tradition.

This paper constructs a model of metaphysical indeterminacy that can accommodate a kind of ‘deep’ worldly indeterminacy that arguably arises in quantum mechanics via the Kochen-Specker theorem, and that is incompatible with prominent theories of metaphysical indeterminacy such as that in Barnes and Williams (2011). We construct a variant of Barnes and Williams's theory that avoids this problem. Our version builds on situation semantics and uses incomplete, local situations rather than possible worlds to build a model. We evaluate the resulting (...) theory and contrast it with similar alternatives, concluding that our model successfully captures deep indeterminacy. (shrink)

One of the primary and most consequential properties of consciousness is that it is absolutely isolated. One’s consciousness cannot be shared by anyone else. Self- consciousness about this condition can give rise to a debilitating sense of loneliness. One important task of culture is to manage this sense of loneliness, to defer and diminish it. Religion supplies ideas that function in this way. Literature supplies imaginative experiences to the same ends. After introducing the general topic through a literary example, the (...) paper takes up the problem of other minds and solipsism, considering aspects of the issue treated by Wittgenstein, Moore, Heidegger and Descartes. The possibility of solipsism both demonstrates and results from the unbridgeable isolation of consciousness. The second section turns to the mind/body relation. It argues that intentionality is irreducible to a purely physical explanatory account. This is not because the mind is a brain-like entity that interacts with the body. Rather, it is because any physical explanatory account presupposes an observer or speaker outside the system being observed or described. The irreducibility of that observer is, so to speak, the flip side of solipsism. The unobserved observer is, precisely, each one of us. Each of us is removed in just this way from the world he/she is perceiving and addressing hence, our isolation. The third section turns to the varieties of loneliness here called ‘longing’, ‘grief’ and ‘despair’ relating these to the inevitability of death, primarily the death of others. The fourth part takes up the feeling that makes loneliness intense, love. It goes on to consider the thematization of loneliness in the most common narrative structure cross- culturally, romantic tragi-comedy. The concluding sections examine the ways in which religion and literature serve not only to represent loneliness, but, what is more important, to inhibit or manage it. (shrink)

The Fiery Test of Critique describes Kant’s indirect proof of idealism from the Antinomy of Pure Reason as the ‘nugget of gold’ in the Critique of Pure Reason’s Transcendental Dialectic. Here, I offer critical reflections on Proops’s reading of Kant’s indirect proof.

Action Anthropology and Sol Tax are both important chapters in the development of contemporary anthropology and applied social science. Although unknown or forgotten by most, both continue to be revered and applied by a group of intellectual descendants who will not let die either the man or the approach to helping commu-nities. In 2010 and 2011, former students, colleagues, the two Tax daughters--both academic professionals--and others came together to explore the relevance of Action Anthropology and Sol Tax to applied social (...) science today. In reflecting on the history of the man and the intellectual tradition that he inspired, the authors document the many contributions made by Tax and his student-colleague cohorts. Using examples from contemporary applications, the contributors also demonstrate the present-day power of the ideas and approaches developed over the first 75 years. Time will tell whether Action Anthropology and Sol Tax in 2012: The Final Word? will close this important chapter in the development of applied social science research. Regardless, the tenets of Action Anthropology, detailed and explicated throughout this volume, will continue to provide a foundation for all applied scientists interested in social justice, indigenous decolonization, and improving the human condition. (shrink)

Pádraig Hogan; What Makes Practice Educational?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 15–26, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.146.

This essay focuses on the anger of Dhaniya, the female protagonist of Premchand's Godan. Rather than approaching it as a specifically feminist anger, it sees it more broadly as the anger of the oppressed, which signals hope that the conditions of oppression will change. Premchand is influenced by Karl Marx, and uses narrative emotion to tell the (Indian) story of labor and capital; this essay puts Panksepp's neurocognitive theory of anger in conversation with Marxist political theory, demonstrating how Marx's thoughts (...) on systemic economic injustices can elucidate the “social context” in which emotion systems (such as RAGE, PLAY, and CARE) are activated. (shrink)

A central doctrine of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason holds that the content of human experience is rooted in an affection of sensibility by unknowable things in themselves. This famous and puzzling affection doctrine raises two seemingly intractable old problems, which can be termed the Indispensability and the Consistency Problems. By what right does Kant present affection by supersensible entities as an indispensable requirement of experience? And how could any argument for such indispensability avoid violating the Critique's doctrine of noumenal (...) ignorance? This essay develops a new solution to both problems, setting out from the continuity between Kant's early and mature views on sensibility and mind-world relations. Kant's early writings subscribe to an interactionist cosmology opposed to both Leibniz's preestablished harmony and Malebranche's occasionalism. The modern debate on mind-world relations shaping Kant's early cosmology points us to a widely recognized motivation for interactionism, turning on a constraint on agency within certain noninteractionist cosmologies. In particular, Kant's early conversion to a libertarian theory of freedom, together with his rejection of occasionalism, provides the basis for a compelling argument for the indispensability of world-mind affection relations. Extended to the transcendental idealist framework, the same argument reveals noumenal affection as an indispensable presupposition of some knowledge claims consistently upheld by Kant. This leads in turn to a satisfying solution to the Consistency Problem, showing that the doctrine of noumenal affection is not merely consistent with, but is partly motivated by, Kant's commitment to noumenal ignorance. (shrink)

I. When, through the power of emblems, I revealed to him fantastical cities formed from desire and fear, the great Khan baffled. Everyone else comes with politic accounts of maneuvering threats or the chance for precious goods. But me? I tell tales that arrive like stray thoughts to an idle man seated by the doorway of his home, taking in a little fresh air of an evening. "What does that serve for you, then, all that traveling?" he asks ("A che (...) ti serve, allora, tanto viaggiare?" [Calvino, Le Città, 25]).II: There are scenes in Premchand's Godān that persist in your memory. One concerns the young, motherless widow, Jhuniyā; her lover, Gobar; and Gobar's parents, Horī and Dhaniyā. Abandoned by Gobar, the pregnant .. (shrink)