I begin by refuting Davidson’s classic account of akrasia, which turns on a purported distinction between judging p and judging p “all things considered.” The upshot of this refutation is that an adequate account of akrasia must turn on a distinction between different ways in which the agent can make judgments about her practical reasons. On the account I propose, an akratic agent makes an existential judgment that there is some decisive practical reason to act in a certain way without (...) also knowing what that reason is. An agent can do what such a reason requires only by deviating from the conditions under which her action would be a response to it. The possibility of akrasia is a consequence of our concern not only to perform actions that match what our reasons require but also to manifest reasons in conduct that they inform. (shrink)

In this, the first book devoted to Peter Achinstein's influential work in philosophy of science, twenty distinguished philosophers, including four Lakatos award winners, address various aspects of Achinstein's influential views on the nature of scientific evidence, scientific explanation, and scientific realism. It includes short essays by Steve Gimbel and Jeff Maynes, Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Victor DiFate, Jerry Doppelt, Adam Goldstein, Philip Kitcher, Fred Kronz, Deborah Mayo, Greg Morgan, Helen Longino, John Norton, Michael Ruse, Bas van Fraassen, Stathis Psillos, Larry (...) Laudan, Richard Richards, Kent Staley, and Jim Woodward with replies to each contributor from Peter Achinstein. Readers will come away with an understanding of the current debate in multiple areas of philosophy of science and how various contemporary issues are connected. (shrink)

Coherentism maintains that coherent beliefs are more likely to be true than incoherent beliefs, and that coherent evidence provides more confirmation of a hypothesis when the evidence is made coherent by the explanation provided by that hypothesis. Although probabilistic models of credence ought to be well-suited to justifying such claims, negative results from Bayesian epistemology have suggested otherwise. In this essay we argue that the connection between coherence and confirmation should be understood as a relation mediated by the causal relationships (...) among the evidence and a hypothesis, and we offer a framework for doing so by fitting together probabilistic models of coherence, confirmation, and causation. We show that the causal structure among the evidence and hypothesis is sometimes enough to determine whether the coherence of the evidence boosts confirmation of the hypothesis, makes no difference to it, or even reduces it. We also show that, ceteris paribus, it is not the coherence of the evidence that boosts confirmation, but rather the ratio of the coherence of the evidence to the coherence of the evidence conditional on a hypothesis. (shrink)

Vocal affect is a subcomponent of emotion programs that coordinate a variety of physiological and psychological systems. Emotional vocalizations comprise a suite of vocal behaviors shaped by evolution to solve adaptive social communication problems. The acoustic forms of vocal emotions are often explicable with reference to the communicative functions they serve. An adaptationist approach to vocal emotions requires that we distinguish between evolved signals and byproduct cues, and understand vocal affect as a collection of multiple strategic communicative systems subject to (...) the evolutionary dynamics described by signaling theory. We should expect variability across disparate societies in vocal emotion according to culturally evolved pragmatic rules, and universals in vocal production and perception to the extent that form–function relationships are present. (shrink)

A careful reading of the initial posing of the issue to be debated with Protagoras and of its subsequent restatement when the debate resumes after a break will show that Socrates employs three distinct formulae, only the first of which answers at all closely to the term "Unity of the Virtues" which has been commonly used in the scholarly literature as a label for the position which Socrates upholds in the debate. The other two formulae, perfectly distinguishable from the first, (...) I shall call the "Similarity" and "Biconditionality" Theses. I shall discuss the three Theses seriatim. But let me emphasize from the start that they are not treated in the text as logically disjoint tenets, but as successive moments in the elucidation of a single doctrine. That is how Protagoras himself understands them. At no point does he try to drive a wedge between them or play off one against another. He accepts them as complementary expressions of a theory which he rejects and combats as a whole. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs—beliefs whose propositional contents will be true just in case—and because—an agent believes them. Following Grice, many philosophers hold that believing such propositions would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. This paper argues that such objections get their force from a popular but problematic function-model of theoretical deliberation, and that attending to the case of self-fulfilling belief can help us see why such a model is mistaken. The paper shows that on (...) a revised model of theoretical deliberation our evidence will problematically underdetermine any appropriate doxastic attitude: when belief in a proposition is self-fulfilling, our evidence is insufficient to support belief, disbelief, or even suspended judgment toward that proposition. (shrink)

Many supporters of ‘moral bioenhancement’ (MBE), the use of biomedical interventions for moral improvement, have been criticised for having unrealistic proposals. The interventions they suggest have often been called infeasible and their implementation plans vague or unethical. I dispute these criticisms by showing that various interventions to implement MBE are practically and ethically feasible enough to warrant serious consideration. Such interventions include transcranial direct current stimulation over the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as well as supplementation with lithium and omega-3. (...) Considering their efficacy and feasibility, it is strange that these interventions have rarely been proposed or discussed as MBE. I review evidence that each of those interventions can reduce antisocial behaviour, reduce racial bias, increase executive function or increase prosocial traits like fairness and altruism. I then specify and defend realistic, ethically permissible ways to implement these interventions, especially for violent offenders and public servants—the former as rehabilitation and the latter to meet the high standards of their occupations. These interventions could be given to violent offenders in exchange for a reduced sentence or compulsorily in some cases. Potential intervention methods for non-prisoners include increasing the USDA-recommended dose of omega-3, encouraging food companies to supplement their products with omega-3 or trace lithium, requiring MBE for employment as a police officer or political leader, and insurance companies providing discounts for undergoing MBE. In some reasonably limited form, using these interventions may be a good first step to implement the project of MBE. (shrink)

In his groundbreaking book, Against Coherence (2005), Erik Olsson presents an ingenious impossibility theorem that appears to show that there is no informative relationship between probabilistic measures of coherence and higher likelihood of truth. Although Olsson's result provides an important insight into probabilistic models of epistemological coherence, the scope of his negative result is more limited than generally appreciated. The key issue is the role conditional independence conditions play within the witness testimony model Olsson uses to establish his result. Olsson (...) maintains that his witness model yields charitable ceteris paribus conditions for any theory of probabilistic coherence. Not so. In fact, Olsson's model, like Bayesian witness models in general, selects a peculiar class of models that are in no way representative of the range of options available to coherence theorists. Recent positive results suggest that there is a way to develop a formal theory of coherence after all. Further, although Bayesian witness models are not conducive to the truth, they are conducive to reliability. (shrink)

This book presents an original and creative enactment of a confrontation between Heidegger and Plato. Gregory Fried outlines a new approach to ethics and politics combining skeptical idealism and what he calls polemical ethics, and goes on to apply polemical ethics to the crucial questions around fascism and racism.

We analyze the two cardinal properties of definable sets in homogeneous graphs.

Blair proposes that fluid intelligence, working memory, and executive function form a unitary construct: fluid cognition. Recently, our group has utilized a combined correlational–experimental cognitive neuroscience approach, which we argue is beneficial for investigating relationships among these individual differences in terms of neural mechanisms underlying them. Our data do not completely support Blair's strong position. (Published Online April 5 2006).

INTRODUCTION THE AGE OF PAINE I know not whether any Man in the World has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than ...

“Dreams always precede waking life: It’s an absolute given truth, a truth like 2 plus 2 equals 4. This means that life always confirms what the dream has discerned and concluded beforehand.”It seems that brain, thought and computer have become intertwined and now share a common fate. An important part of neuroscience not only requires a computational paradigm but also relies on technology to be operational. Experiments in neuroscience are built on the use of material apparatuses dependent on the computer. (...) Isn’t the emergence of the computer in the last century based on a certain representation of thought and the brain? It has become difficult to distinguish among these three representations (computer, thought and... (shrink)

We use the path integral form of quantum electrodynamics to show that a causal classical limit to QED can be derived by functionally integrating over the photon coordinates, starting from an initial photon vacuum and ending in a final coherent radiation state driven by the anticipated classical charged particle trajectories. The resulting charged particle transition amplitude depends only on particle coordinates. When the \ limit is taken, only those particle paths that are not constrained by the final radiation state are (...) varied. These results demonstrate that the collapse from an infinity of charged particle paths, a path integral description, to causally interacting classical trajectories, a stationary-action description, is critically dependent on including final coherent state radiation and maintaining the distinction between particle paths that are free to vary and those trajectories that can be monitored by the final state radiation. (shrink)

The language of quantification theory does not seem to adequately reflect the logic of mass terms in ordinary english. Mass terms are treated as though they are true of objects which can be counted. In this paper, It is argued that by placing certain restrictions upon formulas which contain the identity sign it is possible to arrive at a formalization of mass term sentences which avoids this difficulty. The proposed restrictions are defended against charges that certain mass term sentences seem (...) to be rendered inexpressible. (shrink)

The male gametes of most organisms lack cytoplasm. Consequently, most cytoplasmic genetic elements are maternally inherited: they cannot be transmitted patrilinnearly. The evolutionary interests of cytoplasmic elements therefore lie in transmission through the female. These elements may thus be in evolutionary conflict with nuclear genes which are transmitted by both sexes. This conflict is manifested in observations of cytoplasmically induced biased sex‐ratios. Some cytoplasmic genes avoid this fate by biasing the primary sex ratio towards females, or by inducing parthenogenesis. Others (...) kill male hosts, and either achieve transmission via dispersal, or benefit their clonal relatives in the dead male's female siblings. Still others cause the failure of zygotes resulting from pairings between males carrying specific microbes and females lacking them, causing an increase in the microbes through the sterilisation of non‐bearing females. Many, but not all, of these ‘ultra‐selfish’ microbes are closely related. Investigations of the significance of their phylogenetic affinities, or lack of them, their adaptability in terms of the methods by which they avoid, or ameliorate, the adverse effects of being in male hosts, and their importance as selective agents in the evolution of invertebrate sex determination systems, provide fertile spheres for future research. (shrink)

Leave it to the boob tube to explain the meaning of existence. Let Gilligan's Island teach you about situational ethics. Learn about epistemology from The Brady Bunch. Explore Aristotle's Poetics by watching 24. Television has grappled with a wide range of philosophical conundrums. According to the networks, it's the ultimate source of all knowledge in the universe. So why not look at the small screen for answers to all of humanity's dilemmas? There's not a single issue discussed by the great (...) thinkers of the past that hasn't been hashed out between commercials in shows like Mad Men and Leave It To Beaver..."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

'The Philosophy of Forgiveness, Volume III: Forgiveness in World Religions' is a collection of essays that explores the philosophy of forgiveness in different religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Each chapter scours one of these religions for insights on the concept of forgiveness, asking questions such as whether forgiveness is a virtue, whether it is conditional, whether God has standing to forgive, and whether it is permissible not to forgive some extreme wrongs. In some of the chapters, (...) the concept of forgiveness in one religion is compared with that in another. In other chapters, the ideas of different traditions within a religion are compared and contrasted. Also, some chapters compare a religious concept to the views of a philosophical figure, such as Aristotle, Kant, or Derrida. The contributors to the volume come from various cultural and religious backgrounds and from different disciplines, such as philosophy, religious studies, and psychology. The collection is written for scholars, graduate students, and upper-division undergraduate students interested in forgiveness or comparative religious philosophy. (shrink)

The usual problems of measurement and its meaning are complicated and magnified when the object of study is in principle and in fact inaccessible. When a phenomenon occurs in a place where our instruments cannot reach, what can the relation between the instrument, its reading, and the phenomenon be? This essay asks how researchers have addressed questions about inaccessible processes of Earth's magnetic field on the surface, at the edge of space and under its surface. This case takes us beyond (...) simple contrasts of inductive and deductive methods, or field sciences versus basic sciences, to a messier, more nuanced view of inherently complex sciences. The article focuses on investigations of Earth's magnetism and electricity, but its perspectives are applicable to many areas of recent science. (shrink)

The November–December issue of the Hastings Center Report features a set of essays on the ethics of writing stories of patient care. The Report regularly features such stories, but some ways of telling them would be plainly unacceptable, and some in bioethics have suggested that the bar for acceptability is very high. Tod Chambers takes that position in this essay set. Drawing on the work of the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, he proposes that case studies should be “polyphonic”—meaning that they (...) contain “a diversity of voices that are unmediated and distinct.” In effect, he calls for a kind of coauthoring of stories about patients. In a second essay, Arthur Frank also calls for including the patient’s voice, but he builds on Bakhtin’s call for “dialogic” storytelling, in which the author seeks to represent the characters in the story as having their own voices and their own lives: “they can talk back.” A third essay, by Philip Rosoff, is concerned about the problem of harm and patient anonymity, which in the contemporary media environment has become harder to address. (shrink)

James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King is the most effective popularization of Augustine’s political thought currently available, but its reliance on the work of Oliver O’Donovan obscures uncomfortable elements of Augustine’s thought, and it does not adequately address how the racial and socioeconomic composition of Christian communities is itself formative.

The integration of computer science, biology, and engineering has resulted in the emergence of rapidly growing interdisciplinary fields such as bioinformatics, bioengineering, DNA computing, and systems and synthetic biology. Ideas derived from computer science and engineering can provide innovative solutions to biological problems and advance research in new directions. Although interdisciplinary research has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, the scientists contributing to these efforts largely remain specialists in their original disciplines and are not fully capable of covering the many (...) facets of multidisciplinary problems, which impedes the development of truly integrated solutions. It would be .. (shrink)