Consider manipulation in which one agent, avoiding force, threat, or fraud mobilizes some non-concern motive of another so as to induce this other to behave or move differently than she would otherwise have behaved or moved, given her circumstances and her initial ranking of concerns. As an instance, imagine that I get us to miss the opening of a play that I have grudgingly agreed to attend by engaging your sublimated compulsive tendency to check the stove when we are halfway (...) to the theatre. Such motive manipulation is, I take it, widely regarded as morally worrisome. If it really is morally worrisome, then we should be able to explain adequately why it is so. But existing condemnations of manipulation come up short in this regard. In this paper, I develop and defend a more plausible account of the moral status of this phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper examines Charles Peirce's graphical notation for first-order logic with identity. The notation forms a part of his system of "existential graphs," which Peirce considered to be his best work in logic. In this paper a Tarskian semantics is provided for the graphical system.

Central to Wilfrid Sellars ' philosophical system is his belief that science's current ontology is inadequate as it fails to provide for an acceptable account of perceptual experience. Unfortunately, this remains the most puzzling plank in his philosophy. Sellars himself argues for this position via his wellknown example of a pink ice cube and its homogeneous colour. This homogeneity, says Sellars, bars the acceptance of science's present ontology of achromatic particles, and requires the introduction of items which are truly coloured. (...) Only with such a revised and expanded ontology, with all that entails, can science adequately meet its explanatory demands. I aim here to remedy at least some of the confusions and misunderstandings this position has engendered. But I mean to take a different route from Sellars. In short, given the problems with Sellars ' views on homogeneity, I will argue for the Sellarsian conclusion as to the inadequacy of present scientific ontologies, yet without reliance on the puzzling doctrine of homogeneity. I begin then with a detailed examination of Sellars official position, indicate the trouble spots, and begin an alternative route. As I conceive things, however, the position I will sketch is still thoroughly Sellarsian, for it proceeds from premises Sellars himself has endorsed. (shrink)

This paper explores how image worship was conceptualized and represented by Chinese authors during the first four centuries of Buddhist presence in China. Previous scholarship has argued that image worship was initially seen in China as a distinctively Buddhist practice, so much so that Buddhism was even known to the Chinese as the “Religion of Images”. By examining the history of the interpretation of this term, the evolution of stories about sacred images, and the presentation of image worship in debates (...) about the compatibility of Buddhism with Chinese culture, I will argue that image worship was first seen as a distinctly Buddhist or non-Chinese practice only in the late fifth century. Ironically, image worship came to be seen or represented as “foreign” only long after it had already become part of most forms of Chinese religion. (shrink)

I analyzed 298 open-ended responses of undergraduate students who have been reported for cheating to the question, “What, if anything, would have stopped you from committing your act of academic dishonesty?” These responses included a few major themes: students pled ignorance of what constitutes academic dishonesty and the consequences/seriousness associated with violations; students tended to deflect blame, usually by saying that their professor could have done something differently (neutralization); students did not feel they had enough time, resources, and/or skills to (...) get the desired result without taking responsibility for this lack of time, resources, and/or skills (strain); students felt they did not manage their time well with accepting the blame for the poor time management; and that a bad grade was not an option. These data and results are discussed in relation to the extant literature on the topic. (shrink)

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

A critique of Rorty's own provocative political philosophy, as well as an in-depth look at both the issues concerning the relationship between the public and the private, and arguments on the role of reason in liberal political discourse generally.

Aggressive medical and surgical interventions have not been clearly demonstrated to improve survival in neonates with trisomy 18; there are no data that demonstrates improved quality of life for these children after these interventions; and these interventions are clearly associated with significant morbidity, resource allocation, and cost.

For nearly two decades, the process of reviewing the ethical merit of research involving human subjects has been based on the application of principles initially described in the U.S. National Commission's Belmont Report, and later articulated more fully by Beauchamp and Childress in their Principles of Biomedical Ethics. Recently, the use of ethical principles for deliberating about moral problems in medicine and research, referred to in the pejorative sense as “principlism”, has come under scrutiny. In this paper we argue that (...) these principles can provide a foundation for the source of ethical appraisal of human research, but are not themselves wholly adequate for this purpose. Therefore, we further propose that principles should be understood as heuristics that can be “specified” as described by DeGrazia , and that the principle‐based approach should be supplemented by formally incorporating “sensitivity to context” into the evaluation of clinical trials. (shrink)

Let the marriage bond be the set of extralegal obligations to one another that individuals acquire in getting married. And let a conception of the marriage bond be an account of the nature and content of these. Here, I argue that the conception of this bond dominant among us is uncongenial to romantic love among individuals of a certain psychological type. Then, after articulating a conception more congenial to romantic love among such individuals, I argue that if we wish to (...) make marriage safer for love, we should make room in our thinking and practice for this conception, embracing a form of marital pluralism. (shrink)

Rosenberg's The Thinking Self also takes Husserl to task. Without going into the details here, Rosenberg finds Husserl's reliance on retentions to be inadequate. Instead, Rosenberg proposes that previous representations enter into our unified, instantaneous awareness of a succession as ones of which we are aware that we are, or were, aware of; as items of so-called meta-awareness. But this account falls prey to the same worries as Husserl's. For again, it is by no means clear what a series of (...) awarenesses, meta-awarenesses, meta-meta-awarenesses, etc. have to do with the representation of a temporal series. (shrink)

Assuming the position that takes properties to be tropes rather than universals and takes ordinary objects as bundles of tropes, the essay first argues that the Law of the Identity of Indiscernibles survives the challenge raised by Black's "two-sphere universe". It is because the Law of Indiscernibles becomes a trivialconsequence of the assumed trope ontology. The essay then considers four construals of the thesis of Uniqueness differing in strength. The construals are developed in terms of both the possibility that tropes (...) of an object may be transferred to another object and the possibility that objects may survive cross-worldproperty changes. Finally, the essay argues that a trilemma arises from three intuitively innocent claims: (1) that same world objects do not share tropes, (2) that cross world objects may share some (but not all) tropes, and (3) that objects may survive cross-world property changes. And, unfortunately, Indiscernibles plays a role in giving rise to one horn of the trilemma. The essay suggests "ultraessentialism" as a possible way out of the trilemma. (shrink)

The problematic Sui-dynasty catalog Lidai sanbao ji 歷代三寶紀 is well known for its many incorrect translator attributions for early canonical Chinese Buddhist texts, attributions that in large measure were accepted by the later tradition and which have remained in place even within modern editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon. The question of how its compiler Fei Changfang 費長房 arrived at his information—and whether he acted in good or bad faith in presenting it—has long been debated. Recent scholarship has argued that (...) patterns in how the Lidai sanbao ji draws from earlier sources demonstrate that Fei Changfang engaged in a deliberate manipulation of his data. This essay, in contrast, introduces manuscripts from Dunhuang of earlier and otherwise lost catalogs of Chinese Buddhist texts to demonstrate that these patterns can be explained in other ways. More broadly, it is suggested that the errors of the Lidai sanbao ji should be understood not as the products of a solitary forger, but as a sign of a wider loss of literary historical consciousness that impacted Chinese Buddhism between ca. 550–650 CE. (shrink)

The Moral Foundations of Trust seeks to explain why people place their faith in strangers, and why doing so matters. Trust is a moral value that does not depend upon personal experience or on interacting with people in civic groups or informal socializing. Instead, we learn to trust from our parents, and trust is stable over long periods of time. Trust depends on an optimistic world view: the world is a good place and we can make it better. Trusting people (...) are more likely to give through charity and volunteering. Trusting societies are more likely to redistribute resources from the rich to the poor. Trust has been in decline in the United States for over 30 years. The roots of this decline are traceable to declining optimism and increasing economic inequality, which Uslaner supports by aggregate time series in the United States and cross-sectional data across market economies. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Une «situation de choix paradoxal» est une situation dans laquelle un agent connaîtrait davantage de succès en regard des préférences qu’il a effectivement, si ces préférences étaient différentes de ce qu’elles sont. Supposons que les agents rationnels ne choisissent pas à l’encontre de leurs préférences, que leur choix n’est déterminé que par ces préférences, et que leurs préférences intrinsèques ne changent pas de façon spontanée, automatique et directe sous l’influence de la critique rationnelle. Même dans de telles hypothèses, les (...) agents rationnels peuvent résoudre optimalement un éventail de situations de choix paradoxal au moyen de mécanismes qui les amènent à réviser leurs préférences. Dans cet article, je présente et défends un tel modèle de révision rationnelle des préférences. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty occurs at alarming rates in higher education. In the present study, we examined predictors of academic cheating behaviors, and beliefs in the acceptability of cheating, in disliked courses at two large universities, using structural equation modeling. Perceived mastery and extrinsic goal structures were related to beliefs about cheating but not cheating behaviors. Beliefs in the acceptability of cheating were more likely to be endorsed in math and science courses. College students were more likely to cheat and to believe (...) in the acceptability of cheating when they reported a high need for sensation. (shrink)

For nearly two decades, the process of reviewing the ethical merit of research involving human subjects has been based on the application of principles initially described in the U.S. National Commission's Belmont Report, and later articulated more fully by Beauchamp and Childress in their Principles of Biomedical Ethics. Recently, the use of ethical principles for deliberating about moral problems in medicine and research, referred to in the pejorative sense as “principlism”, has come under scrutiny. In this paper we argue that (...) these principles can provide a foundation for the source of ethical appraisal of human research, but are not themselves wholly adequate for this purpose. Therefore, we further propose that (1) principles should be understood as heuristics that can be “specified” as described by DeGrazia (1992), and (2) that the principle‐based approach should be supplemented by formally incorporating “sensitivity to context” into the evaluation of clinical trials. (shrink)

abstract: Numerous authors have compared Process thought as articulated by Alfred North Whitehead and Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, owing to the fact that each of these systems is rooted in the notion that relational action, rather than substance, is meta-physically fundamental and that human life is to be understood as fundamentally experiential. However, despite the fact that the foundational philosophical tenets of Mahayana Buddhism are built on axioms established and rooted in early Buddhism, relatively little has been written comparing Process thought (...) with the philosophy of early Buddhism. In this essay, I first offer a brief comparison and discussion of the foundational metaphysical principles of these systems. The purpose of this essay is to extend the dialogue between Process thought and early Buddhism, highlighting both areas of convergence and points of departure. The first task is to establish how key terms in each system may be understood in terms of the other and to point out ways in which these systems converge around questions of ontology, agency, and the nature of the self. I will then discuss the epistemologies that underwrite these meta-physical commitments. Finally, I will conclude with a brief comparison of the role of aesthetics in human experience and the soteriological project within these two schools of thought. (shrink)

Comer and Schwartz argue that the business ethics course should aim to cultivate moral courage within our students. Essential to their argument is the use of fictional exemplars of moral courage to motivate our students. I argue that the classroom, even when supplemented by good fiction, is not the right context by which to practice moral courage—the habituation of moral courage requires a context of risk. I suggest a virtue that can be practiced in the classroom—intellectual courage. By aiming at (...) this virtue, we will also get the virtue of moral courage. (shrink)

Several accounts of logical truth are compared and shown to define distinct concepts. Nevertheless, conditions are given under which they happen to declare exactly the same sentences logically true. These conditions involve the variety of objects in the domain, the richness of the language, and the logical resources available. It is argued that the class of sentences declared logically true by each of the accounts depends on particularities of the actual world.

Recently a gender-selective harvesting strategy has been proposed for possible control of aquatic invasive species, wherein females of the invasive species are harvested, whilst stocking the males (abbreviated as FHMS strategy) (Lyu et al. in Nat Resour Model 33(2):e12252, 2020). We consider the FHMS strategy with a weak Allee effect, and show that its extinction boundary need not be hyperbolic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a non-hyperbolic extinction boundary in two-compartment mating models structured (...) by sex. The model possesses a rich dynamical structure, with several local co-dimension one bifurcations occurring. We also show the occurrence of a global homoclinic bifurcation, which has applicability for large scale strategic bio-control. (shrink)

The use of torture for interrogational purposes is frequently justified by a ‘ticking-bomb’ case, claiming that serious harms will come to a large group of people if a suspect is not tortured for the location of the bomb. In this paper, I will argue that an important recent defense of interrogational torture (Seumas Miller’s) faces several practical and epistemological problems. In this paper, I argue that these epistemological problems lead to the failure of Miller’s argument. I also argue that a (...) minimalist conception of epistemological duties gives us further reason to reject both Miller’s argument and torture more generally. I conclude that arguments for torture that are based on ticking-bomb cases are bound to face an irresolvable epistemological problem, closing one of the more prominent avenues used to justify torture. (shrink)

Philosophy has long struggled to understand the nature of color. The central role color plays in our lives, in visual experience, in art, as a metaphor for emotions, has made it an obvious candidate for philosophical reflection. Understanding the nature of color, however, has proved a daunting task, despite the numerous fields that contribute to the project. Even knowing how to start can be difficult. Is color to be understood as an objective part of reality, a property of objects with (...) a status similar to shape and size? Or is color more like pain, to be found only in experience and so somehow subjective? Or is color more like what some have said about time--that it seems real until we reflect enough, where we come ultimately to dismiss it as mere illusion? If color is more like shape and size, can we give a scientific account of it? Various strategies exist for this option--taking the color of an object to be just a complicated texture of that object, one that reflects certain wavelengths. Or perhaps color is merely a disposition to cause experiences in us, as salt has a disposition to dissolve. On the other hand, if color is more like pain, and found only in subjective experience, what is the nature of color experience? How, for instance, does an experience of red differ from an experience of blue, or from an experience of pain for that matter? Finally, if color is mere illusion, how do we continue to be so taken in by that illusion and how can something unreal seem so real and important to us? (shrink)

Only a small proportion of academically dishonest students ever receive an official report of academic dishonesty, and the sociology of deviance literature is ripe with studies illustrating disproportionalities in detecting, policing, and prosecuting crimes. This study addresses the degree to which disproportionalities exist in the application of relatively few official sanctions levied upon students for academic dishonesty. I compared the demographics of those who have been reported for cheating with those of an entire undergraduate student body and of self-reported cheaters (...) in the literature. I found that international students are much more likely than domestic students to get reported. (shrink)