Mathematical pluralism can take one of three forms: (1) every consistent mathematical theory consists of truths about its own domain of individuals and relations; (2) every mathematical theory, consistent or inconsistent, consists of truths about its own (possibly uninteresting) domain of individuals and relations; and (3) the principal philosophies of mathematics are each based upon an insight or truth about the nature of mathematics that can be validated. (1) includes the multiverse approach to set theory. (2) helps us to understand (...) the significance of the distinguished non‐logical individual and relation terms of even inconsistent theories. (3) is a metaphilosophical form of mathematical pluralism and hasn't been discussed in the literature. In what follows, I show how the analysis of theoretical mathematics in object theory exhibits all three forms of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

HISTORIANS of psychology are almost unanimously agreed on one point: that psychology is a relatively new science. There may be some disagreement as to when it started--with Weber, or Fechner, or Wundt, or James--but there is almost no dissent from the proposition that psychology as a scientific discipline is less than one and one-half centuries old. Many earlier writers are often discussed in histories of psychology, but invariably they are called speculators, or philosophers, as opposed to scientists. We believe that (...) this is an incorrect appraisal of the career of psychological research. To demonstrate our point, we propose to show how one key psychological idea from Descartes' work has had an extensive and robust scientific history. If it is true that this Cartesian idea has had great influence in science, then many claims concerning the history of psychology will need to be reconsidered. Not everything which happened in psychology prior to the nineteenth century was speculative, nor is everything which happened later scientific. Even more importantly, if Descartes' idea has been of such central concern to several hundred years of research, it must be treated as an important claim about the way the world is, as a law of nature. (shrink)

Seeking to rediscover the connection between philosophy as studied in universities and those general views of man and reality which are 'philosophy' to the educated layman, Edward Craig here offers a view of philosophy and its history since the early seventeenth century. He presents this period as concerned primarily with just two visions of the essential nature of man. One portrays human beings as made in the image of God, required to resemble him as far as lies in our (...) power; the other sees us as autonomous creators of our own environment and values. The author writes with a broad sweep not encouraged by recent fashion, yet shows how textual detail which previous commentators have found opaque becomes transparent when viewed against such a background. In the final chapter he treats passages from recent work in the same way. The general conceptions which philosophical thought embodies can equally well be embodied in other media, especially literary. The author illustrates this point with German and English examples and thereby draws together disciplines often felt to be far apart. He also reveals striking similarities between Anglo-American and certain twentieth-century continental European lines of thought. (shrink)

The arguments of the dialetheists for the rejection of the traditional law of noncontradiction are not yet conclusive. The reason is that the arguments that they have developed against this law uniformly fail to consider the logic of encoding as an analytic method that can resolve apparent contradictions. In this paper, we use Priest [1995] and [1987] as sample texts to illustrate this claim. In [1995], Priest examines certain crucial problems in the history of philosophy from the point of view (...) of someone without a prejudice in favor of classical logic. For each of these problems, the logic of encoding offers an alternative explanation of the phenomena---this alternative is not considered when Priest describes what options there are in classical logic for analyzing the problem at hand. -/- The argument at heart of the case that Priest develops against the law of noncontradiction (i.e., the argument based on the paradoxes of self-reference) is then reanalyzed in light of encoding logic. After showing why the argument is inconclusive, the paper concludes both with a more general discussion of logic and predication and with the suggestion that there is no need to tamper with the logic of the traditional mode of predication if there is alternative mode of predication which is well-suited to the analysis of cases involving contradictory objects. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey's ‘Truth and Probability’ sketches a proposal for the empirical measurement of credences, along with a corresponding set of axioms for a representation theorem intended to characterize the preference conditions under which this measurement process is applicable. There are several features of Ramsey's formal system which make it attractive and worth developing. However, in specifying his measurement process and his axioms, Ramsey introduces the notion of an ethically neutral proposition, the assumed existence of which plays a key role throughout (...) Ramsey's system. A number of later representation theorems have also appealed to ethically neutral propositions. The notion of ethical neutrality has often been called into question — in fact, there seem to be good reasons to suppose that no ethically neutral propositions exist. In this paper, I present several new, Ramsey-inspired representation theorems that avoid any appeal to ethical neutrality. These theorems preserve the benefits of Ramsey's system, without paying the cost of ethical neutrality. (shrink)

The first full exploration of the political thought of Jan Patocka, student of Husserl and Heidegger and mentor to Václav Havel.

This article evaluates the social contract theorizing of Professors Thomas DonaIdson, Thomas Dunfee and Michael Keeley. This theorizing is tested with G.E. Moore’s concept of moral authority, with moral psychology, and by managerial utility. Both strengths and weaknesses are found in the theories and the author concludes that while there is great potential, much work in theory development remains.

Aiming to circumvent metaphor-prone properties of natural language, Chapman, Kim, Susskind, and Anderson (2009) recently reported evidence for morally induced activation of the levator labii region (manifest as an upper lip raise and a nose wrinkle), also implicated in responding to bad tastes and contaminants. Here we point out that the probative value of this type of evidence rests on a particular (and heavily contested) account of facial movements, one which holds them to be “expressions” or automatic read-outs of internal (...) states. We also observe a largely neglected difference between morally induced disgust and moral disgust proper, arguing that data such as Chapman et al.’s (2009) provide evidence only for the former. (shrink)

This article investigates a high-profile and ongoing dilemma for healthcare professionals (HCPs), namely whether the existence of a (legal) duty of care to genetic relatives of a patient is a help or a hindrance in deciding what to do in cases where a patient’s genetic information may have relevance to the health of the patient’s family members. The English caseABC v St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust and othersconsidered if a duty of confidentiality owed to the patient and a putative duty (...) of care to the patient’s close relatives could coexist in this context. This article examines whether embracing the concept of coexisting duties could enable HCPs to respect duties in line with their clinical judgement, thereby providing legal support and clarity to professionals to allow them to provide the best possible genetics service to both the patient and their family. We argue that these dual duties, framed as a novel, composite duty to consider the interests of genetic relatives, could allow HCPs to exercise and act on their professional judgements about the relative value of information to family members, without fears of liability for negligence or breach of confidence. (shrink)

Spurred by a confluence of factors, most notably the decreasing cost of high-throughput technologies and advances in information technologies, a number of population research initiatives have emerged in recent years. These include large-scale, internationally collaborative genomic projects and biobanks, the latter of which can be defined as an organized collection of human biological material and associated data stored for one or more research purposes. Biobanks are a key emerging research infrastructure, and those established as prospective research resources comprising biospecimens and (...) data from many participants are viewed as particularly promising drivers of biomedical progress. Such biobanks, particularly those publicly funded and set up to promote the public interest, have expanded across the globe in recent years. (shrink)

This book is a treatise on time and on background independence in physics. It first considers how time is conceived of in each accepted paradigm of physics: Newtonian, special relativity, quantum mechanics (QM) and general relativity (GR). Substantial differences are moreover uncovered between what is meant by time in QM and in GR. These differences jointly source the Problem of Time: Nine interlinked facets which arise upon attempting concurrent treatment of the QM and GR paradigms, as is required in particular (...) for a background independent theory of quantum gravity. A sizeable proportion of current quantum gravity programs - e.g. geometrodynamical and loop quantum gravity approaches to quantum GR, quantum cosmology, supergravity and M-theory - are background independent in this sense. This book's foundational topic is thus furthermore of practical relevance in the ongoing development of quantum gravity programs. This book shows moreover that eight of the nine facets of the Problem of Time already occur upon entertaining background independence in classical (rather than quantum) physics. By this development, and interpreting shape theory as modelling background independence, this book further establishes background independence as a field of study. Background independent mechanics, as well as minisuperspace (spatially homogeneous) models of GR and perturbations thereabout are used to illustrate these points. As hitherto formulated, the different facets of the Problem of Time greatly interfere with each others' attempted resolutions. This book explains how, none the less, a local resolution of the Problem of Time can be arrived at after various reconceptualizations of the facets and reformulations of their mathematical implementation. Self-contained appendices on mathematical methods for basic and foundational quantum gravity are included. Finally, this book outlines how supergravity is refreshingly different from GR as a realization of background independence, and what background independence entails at the topological level and beyond. (shrink)

Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities (...) integration. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that there could be a creature that looks, talks, and acts just like a human being but that has no inner awareness, no feelings, no qualia. These philosophers call such a hypothetical being a ‘zombie’, and they use the possibility of zombies to defend central claims in the philosophy of mind. In this essay, I use Wittgensteinian ideas to argue, against such philosophers, that the notion of a zombie is incoherent. I argue first that the possibility of (...) zombies would entail a radical form of skepticism about other minds. I then use that result to argue that philosophers who believe zombies are possible cannot account for the meaningfulness of terms like ‘pain’, ‘qualia’, and ‘phenomenal consciousness’. Since philosophers who think zombies are possible require such terms to define their position, I conclude that such philosophers employ words to which they have given no meaning. I close the essay by reflecting on the nature of these arguments and by drawing some Wittgensteinian lessons about the character of our mental concepts. (shrink)

Linguists rely on intuitive conceptions of structure when comparing expressions and languages. In an algebraic presentation of a language, some natural notions of similarity can be rigorously defined (e.g. among elements of a language, equivalence w.r.t. isomorphisms of the language; and among languages, equivalence w.r.t. isomorphisms of symmetry groups), but it tums out that slightly more complex and nonstandard notions are needed to capture the kinds of comparisons linguists want to make. This paper identihes some of the important notions of (...) structural similarity, with attention to similarity claims that are prominent in the current linguistic tradition of transformational grammar. @ 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: A NEW UNIVERSITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEW SCIENCE Despite the recent and continuing controversy concerning the proper role of ...

_A Vindication of some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ se publicó en febrero de 1779 en respuesta a los ataques que Gibbon había sufrido tras la publicación del primer volumen de su obra, que terminaba con los dos capítulos en cuestión. En sus _Memorias_ da cuenta circunstanciada de la naturaleza de esos ataques y de su irónica decisión de responder únicamente al cargo de no haber sido (...) escrupuloso en el manejo de las fuentes, pasando por alto los cargos de irreligiosidad. Lord Sheffield incluyó la _Vindicación_ en su edición póstuma de los _Miscellaneous Works_ de Gibbon (1796, 1814 2 ). La edición más reciente se encuentra como Apéndice 3 en _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, ed. de David Womersley, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, Londres, 1994, 3 vols., vol. 3, pp. 1108-1184. Véase _Religious Scepticism. Contemporary Responses to Gibbon_, ed. de D. Womersley, St. Augustine Press, South Bend, 1997. (shrink)

This essay explores two topics in Leonard Lawlor’s work: the role of space and the place of emotion. Lawlor’s early and middle works offer a complex and subtle discussion of time, with occasional adversions to space. I attempt to draw out what he says, or should say, about space and place in an effort for it to be given its due in the face of the temporocentrism that is endemic in continental philosophy since Bergson. From there I explore the role (...) of affect and emotion in Lawlor’s more recent writing, arguing for its centrality in his promising and productive idea of “speaking out.”. (shrink)

A long-standing theoretical tradition in clinical psychology and psychiatry sees deliberate self-harm , such as wrist-cutting, as “functional”—a means to avoid painful emotions, for example, or to elicit attention from others. There is substantial evidence that DSH serves these functions. Yet the specific links between self-harm and such functions remain obscure. Why don’t self-harmers use less destructive behaviors to blunt painful emotions or elicit attention? Economists and biologists have used game theory to show that, under certain circumstances, self-harmful behaviors by (...) economic agents and animals serve important strategic goals. In particular, “costly signals” can credibly reveal a “private state” in situations where verbal claims and other “cheap” signals might be disbelieved. Here, DSH is scrutinized using signaling theory, and a variant, the theory of bargaining with private information. The social contexts and associated features of DSH suggest that it might be a costly, and therefore credible, signal of need that compels social partners to respond. (shrink)

In the thesis literature review, an engineering graduate student is expected to place original research in the context of previous work by other researchers. However, for some students, particularly those for whom English is a second language, the literature review may be a mixture of original writing and verbatim source text appropriated without quotations. Such problematic use of source material leaves students vulnerable to an accusation of plagiarism, which carries severe consequences. Is such textual appropriation common in engineering master’s writing? (...) Furthermore, what, if anything, can be concluded when two texts have been found to have textual material in common? Do existing definitions of plagiarism provide a sufficient framework for determining if an instance of copying is transgressive or not? In a preliminary attempt to answer these questions, text strings from a random sample of 100 engineering master’s theses from the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database were searched for appropriated verbatim source text using the Google search engine. The results suggest that textual borrowing may indeed be a common feature of the master’s engineering literature review, raising questions about the ability of graduate students to synthesize the literature. The study also illustrates the difficulties of making a determination of plagiarism based on simple textual similarity. A context-specific approach is recommended when dealing with any instance of apparent copying. (shrink)

To begin with, there is a conceptual necessity implied in the very concept of cause itself, and in all concepts that have a causal element; and this definitional "must," far from being conventional or arbitrary, reflects the natural necessity of those physical systems which in fact constitute the nature of our universe. The conceptual necessity of the concept of cause can be pointed up in the following way. Assume that we have good reason for saying at to that f, g, (...) h, and i are jointly sufficient to E and hence C of E. What would we say at t1 if f, g, h, and i occurred but not E? We would clearly not say then, or ever, that while ordinarily these conditions are jointly sufficient for E, this time they were not; rather we would say that somehow we were mistaken in thinking that f, g, h, and i at t1 were identical with f, g, h, and i at t0. We might have been mistaken in either of two ways. We might have mis-identified one of the conditions at t1, erroneously thinking, say, that p was an f; or one or more of the conditions might have had its nature altered, losing some capacity or power it once had. In either case, we would withdraw the claim at t1 that C was the cause of E. Since we would withdraw the use of C at t1 and would never admit that f, g, h, and i at any t, if genuine instances of f, g, h, and i, would not produce E, we are clearly using C in such a way that actually producing E is part of its meaning. On the assumption that the conditions are genuinely the same, it follows, so to speak, from the principle of identity that they must produce the same effect. (shrink)

Stephen Yablo offers a solution to the problem of mental causation by claiming that the physical is a determinate of the mental's determinable, and therefore the mental and physical do not compete for causal relevance. I present Yablo's solution and argue that the mental‐physical relation cannot meet three necessary conditions for determination. That relation fails to meet the requirements that determinates of the same determinable be incompatible and that no property can be a determinate of more than one determinable. Further, (...) the mental and physical do not fall under the same series of scope inclusions as determinables and their determinates must. Yablo's conception of determination might be rendered more general to avoid these objections, but doing so would prevent it from functioning as a competitor to extant theories of the mental‐physical relation. Thus, Yablo's solution to the problem of mental causation cannot be both adequately specific and correct. (shrink)

In this paper, the author compares passages from two philosophically important texts and concludes that they have fundamental ideas in common. What makes this comparison and conclusion interesting is that the texts come from two different traditions in philosophy, the analytic and the phenomenological. In 1912, Ernst Mally published *Gegenstandstheoretische Grundlagen der Logik und Logistik*, an analytic work containing a combination of formal logic and metaphysics. In 1913, Edmund Husserl published *Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie*, a seminal (...) work in phenomenology in which noemata are defined and given a crucial role in directing our mental states. In the passages from these two texts reproduced below, the author shows that the abstract `determinates' postulated by Mally in 1912 are assigned much the same role that Husserl assigned to noemata in 1913. Though Mally's determinates are not as highly structured as Husserl's noemata, they have a feature that explains how they manage to play the role assigned to them. The corresponding feature is missing, or at least, not emphasized in Husserl's account of noemata. Therefore, insights from both philosophers, and thus from both the analytic and phenomenological traditions, are needed to give a more complete account of directed mental states. (shrink)

Deleuze and jurisdiction : expressionism in jurisprudence -- Personal jurisdiction : the "method of dramatization" in the law of persons -- Minority and personal jurisdiction : judging sex in re alex -- Persons of animal law -- Deleuze, the law of things and subject-matter jurisdiction -- To put to flight : the right of possession -- The activity of judgment : law of actions and the procedural genre of jurisprudence -- Jurisdiction of control : judgment and procedural forms in Thomas (...) v Mowbray -- The locality of law : jurisdiction in Deleuze. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 233-235 [Access article in PDF] News and Views The 1999 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Edward L. ShirleySt. Edward's UniversityThe annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met in Boston on Friday and Saturday, November 19 and 20, 1999. This year's papers addressed the problems of consumerism from Buddhist and Christian perspectives.In the first session, Stephanie Kaza presented a paper (...) in which she analyzed consumerism in light of Buddhist teachings. In her introduction, she offered a brief analysis of consumerist patterns in the first, third, and "fifth" worlds, paying special attention to the ecological impacts of consumerism, the formation of an ideology of consumerism, and the various players in the globalization of consumerism.In the second part of her paper, Stephanie offered an analysis of American "mall mentality" in light of the twelve links of codependent origination found in Buddhist teachings. One can enter the wheel at any point, and malls, advertising, and the entirety of consumeristic culture are designed to stimulate the birth of each of these links: malls are designed to engender craving, clinging, ignorance, and so forth. Because each link in the chain leads to the next, there ensues a "vicious cycle" from which it is difficult to escape. As one can enter the cycle at any point, however, the chain can be broken at any point as well. It was at this point that Stephanie offered a framework for liberation, noting that in Buddhism there are spiritual practices which are designed to help break the cycle at any link, and thus lead to liberation.As there was no Christian respondent, the session went immediately to group discussion, where the worldwide proliferation of "mall mentality" was explored, with the observation that malls in Asian countries are often indistinguishable from those in the United States, even housing identical stores. A sense of helplessness and frustration was expressed by many, but it was noted that each Tradition has a set of tools and resources for dealing with both the frustration as well as the disease, including teachings regarding moderation, simplicity, and restraint.In the second session, Jay McDaniel addressed consumerism from a Christian perspective. Noting that we sometimes speak of dual practice as Buddhists and Christians, he spoke of the "dual practice" of being both a consumer and a Christian. Thus, he noted, he was speaking about consumerism from the inside. Sharing a parable of an old woman and a grasshopper, Jay spoke of various dimensions of [End Page 233] Christian life, such as seeing the Divine in others, hearing and discerning an inner voice, themes of death and Resurrection, and approaching God, not as an object, but as "open space."Jay then spoke of the "Bad News" of consumeristic society, which has produced an over-consuming and "consuming" lifestyle and values to support that lifestyle. It has become, Jay argued, an unofficial religion in which economic growth has become God, and whose priests are economists, politicians and CEOs. Evangelistic advertisers draw us into the church, that is, the mall, and offer us the salvation of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement. Creation is a collection of commodities and humans are skin-encapsulated egos.Jay then spoke of the need for Christians to respond on three levels: intellectual reflection, practical action, and spiritual discipline. For the first level, Jay emphasized a twofold approach: there is a need for historical and policy analysis as well as an explicit presentation of Christian alternative worldviews to the predominant consumerist myth. For the second level, Jay emphasized the need for social engagement to address the structural factors of consumerism. For the third level, he emphasized the need to develop a quality of heart that expresses itself in the intellectual and action arenas, particularly through a revitalization of the Christian contemplative tradition. Through daily practice of sacramental awareness (the presence of the Divine here and now), discernment, trust, and open space, through a daily practice of letting go and living the Paschal Mystery, Jay said Christians can begin to counter the lure... (shrink)

In this article, responding to assertions that the principle of double effect has no place in legal analysis, I explore the overlap between double effect and negligence analysis. In both, questions of culpability arise in situations where a person acts with no intent to cause harm but where reasonable foreseeability of unintended harm exists. Under both analyses, the determination of whether such conduct is permissible involves a reasonability test that balances that foreseeable harm against the good intended by the actor's (...) conduct. In both, absent a finding that the foreseeable harm is unreasonable in light of that intended good, no liability will be imposed upon the actor. Even conceding, however, such general similarity between double effect and negligence analysis - disagreement over the proper interpretation of the reasonability criterion at play in negligence poses an additional challenge for the attempt to correlate negligence with double effect. Economic efficiency interpretations of negligence, for example, purportedly based on the Learned Hand Formula and the RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF THE LAW OF TORTS, propose that culpability depends upon a utilitarian balancing of good effects of conduct (utility) versus its harmful foreseeable consequences (magnitude of risk of injury). Based on such an interpretation of negligence, however, contrasts between actors' states of mind, and normative differences between kinds of goods and harms, ultimately fade into the background and become irrelevant as essential conditions for properly assessing liability. This article elaborates and defends the view that double effect analysis lies at the heart of negligence theory. Part I elucidates in more detail the principle of double effect and describes its prima facie operation in negligence analysis. Part II considers and rejects the economic efficiency interpretation that has been offered as a theory of negligence, overcoming the challenge that such an interpretation presents for the effort to locate double effect analysis in the law. Part III illustrates and confirms the overlap between double effect and negligence by consideration of a series of case applications. The Article proposes that the weighing of conflicting values in double effect analysis and negligence is not achieved - as proposed by law and economics theory with respect to negligence - by imposing a consequentialist-utilitarian reduction of all value to a single concept of good and eliminating the relevance of traditional state of mind distinctions between intention and foreseeability. Instead, each mode of analysis recognizes that distinct culpability determinations flow naturally and plausibly from an appreciation of the traditional legal distinctions made between various types of goods and harms, and upon whether such goods and harms come about as result of an actor's intention or mere foreseeability. Keywords: Double effect, negligence, intention, foreseeability, choice, law and economics, utilitarianism, consequentialism, weighing of values. (shrink)

Aside from adducing little data that bear on our original concerns (pervasive “audience effects” in the encoding of identifiable “disgust expressions”/lack of morally induced disgust versus moral disgust differentiation), Chapman and Anderson (2011) fail to muster a convincing body of evidence for the founding premise of their empirical endeavor—disgust is a bona fide “basic emotion” whose theoretically predicted FM pattern is a goosebump-like, metaphor-resistant readout capable of being effectively analyzed within the “expression programs” canon, leading us to reaffirm that our (...) favored alternative, the “moral disgust as a metaphor” interpretation, is as consistent with all the pertinent data (including theirs), if not more so. (shrink)

This paper examines the relevance of Foucault’s later work to debates in contemporary Continental philosophy concerning the problem of the subject. It shows that Foucault shifts attention away from the history of metaphysics and the metaphysics of the subject to an analysis of the concrete forms of institutional practice and embodiment that shape philosophical discourses. As a result, we are able to see this debate in a different light. In particular, we can grasp the deconstruction of the subject, especially as (...) it is articulated by Critchley and Derrida, in the context of a genealogy of philosophy as care of the self and spiritual exercise. The paper concludes by arguing that Foucault’s work forces us to understand philosophical concepts and problems - and the problem of the subject in particular - in light of the contexts of power, knowledge and subjectivity within which they function and against which they struggle. (shrink)

IMAGINING and remembering, two of the most frequent and fundamental acts of mind, have long been unwelcome guests in most of the many mansions of philosophy. When not simply ignored or over-looked, they have been considered only to be dismissed. This is above all true of imagination, as first becomes evident in Plato’s view that the art of making exact images tends to degenerate into the making of mere semblances. Kant, despite the importance he gives to imagination in the first (...) edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, nevertheless considers images to be lowly "monograms" that are unruly and thus untrustworthy. In more recent times, Sartre, who is nearly as ambivalent as Kant on the subject, has stressed imagination’s "essential poverty"—its character as "debased thought"—while Ryle, in covert counterpoint, has attempted to conceive imagining as parody and pretense: as mere make-believe. (shrink)