We are interested in the relations among shame, guilt, and embarrassment and especially in how each relates to judgments of character. We start by analyzing the distinction between being and feeling guilty, and unearth the role of shame as a guilt feeling. We proceed to examine shame and guilt in relation to moral responsibility and to flaws of character. We address a recent psychological finding that shame is both destructive and in so far as it has a social function could (...) be replaced by guilt. We reinterpret the guilt culture/shame culture distinction in terms of our way of distinguishing these emotions. Finally we examine embarrassment as distinct from shame and find the difference to lie not so much in the phenomenology of the participant as it is in context, and in which elements of the context the speaker describing the emotion wishes to stress. We conclude by defending shame despite its psychological troubles. (shrink)

Paul Ekman's view of the emotions is, we argue, pervasive in psychology and is explicitly shaped to be compatible with evolutionary thinking. Yet, strangely, jealousy and parental love, two emotions that figure prominently in evolutionary psychology, are absent from Ekman's list of the emotions. In this paper we examine why Ekman believes this exclusion is necessary, and what this implies about the limits of his conception of emotion. We propose an alternative way of thinking about emotion that does not exclude (...) jealousy and parental love. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores why emotions are important in our conception of a person's character, and in our own conception of self. Chapter topics include caring, loyalty, sincerity, shame, guilt, and embarrassment, and self-deception.

We are concerned in this paper with the question of what more there is to human nature than cognition, with what it is to be a person in the sense of something that would justify our sympathy. We examine pain, emotion, and the abrogation of values as sources of our sympathy for one another. We further argue that our sympathy over each of these unfortunate events is connected with our sense that they are beyond a person' s will. Computers, we (...) suggest, ought not to engage our sympathy not because of their limited cognitive capacity, and not because they lack intent, but because their wills are too free. (shrink)

Are emotions like sneezes, unwilled, mechanical, or are they like judgments; are they entirely social constructions? Harré and Gillett believe that emotions are exclusively judgments. We argue that their view misses something important. Imagine a person quaking in anger. Both we and Harré and Gillett believe that he is angry only if he has made an implicit judgment, such as I have been transgressed against. But it is the quaking, not the judgment, that gives authenticity and force to the expression (...) of anger. The quaking does not clarify what the actor means but rather it clarifies the relation of the actor to the meaning of his display. What makes it a genuine expression of anger and not a joke or performance is that the quaking is beyond the will. Bodily displays are not necessary to make expressions authentic; anything that shows that the expression is beyond the will will do, for instance, obsessive thoughts, intrusions, or an inability to concentrate. For Harré and Gillett emotions both as displays and feelings do not merely embody judgments but are also speech acts. We argue that an expression, a feeling or flitting through the mind, cannot be a speech act since only the overt can fit into the convention, the strictures of a community. Nor is the display merely a speech act. Since for an emotional display to be genuine it must slip from the lips unbidden. Further, a speech act account makes the emotions arbitrary; they imply that the set of possible emotions is open. We think, on the other hand, that only some sorts of judgments can become part of an emotion; judgments that relate to things that are important enough in a particular culture that judgment display and feeling are linked together involuntarily. (shrink)

This paper attempts to demonstrate, at least for the passions, that while emotions are important elements of common sense psychological thought, they are not psychological, neural, or mental entities. People talk of emotions, we claim, in two sorts of cases: Firstly, when it is believed that someone has done something that she shouldn't because she has been overwhelmed by desire and secondly, when someone is found to be compelled to devote cognitive resources to an act she knows she will never (...) carry out. In this case motivational states command attention and cognitive and physiological resources, distract us, even though they will not issue in action. In either case pointing to an emotion is pointing to a partial, aborted, or misdirected desire. We discuss why emotions are considered important in common sense and professional psychology though they do not exist. (shrink)

In Emotion, character, and responsibility, J. Sabini and M. Silver set out to show specifically why emotions are important in the conception of a person's character. Thus, their collection of previously published material tackles the daunting task of explaining how and why it is that it is often considered that peoples' emotions reflect upon their characters. What the present author finds particularly appealing, as well as convincing, in all of these writings is Sabini and Silver's grounding (...) of their arguments in everyday experience. This article examines whether it is appropriate to judge people on the basis of their emotions, and whether emotions and emotional responses reflect one's character. The question the present author proposes is whether the reader is prepared to make the sacrifices to the content of emotions which Sabini and Silver make in arguing for their conclusion. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

John P. Burgess is the John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Logic and Methodology program at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Jack H. Silver with a thesis on descriptive set theory. He is a very distinguished and influential philosopher of mathematics. He has written several books: A Subject with No Object (with G. Rosen, Oxford University Press, 1997), Computability and Logic (with G. Boolos (...) and R. Jeffrey, 5th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007), Fixing Frege (Princeton University Press, 2005), Mathematics, Models, and Modality (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Philosophical Logic (Princeton University Press, 2009), Truth (with A. G. Burgess, Princeton University Press, 2011), Saul Kripke: Puzzles & Mysteries (Polity Press, 2012), Rigor & Structure (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Set Theory (Cambridge Elements, Forthcoming). In this interview, Professor Burgess talks about how his interests in mathematics and philosophy developed and relate to each other. He then answers questions about specific themes of his philosophical work, with a focus on issues pertaining to philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Recent arbitration and human rights boards of inquiry cases involving discrimination against pregnant employees are reviewed. A comparison is made between remedies available under each procedure. It is suggested that the human resource managers review their policies and procedures relevant to this issue to ensure that they do not have the effect or intent of discriminating against pregnant employees.

Undergraduates (total N = 185) were asked about performance-affecting drugs. Some drugs supposedly affected athletic performance, others memory, and others attention. Some improved performance for anyone who took them, others for the top 10% of performers, others for the bottom 10%, and finally, yet other drugs worked only on the bottom 10% who also showed physical abnormalities. Participants were asked about the fairness of allowing the drug to be used, about banning it, and about whether predictions of future performance based (...) on testing with or without the drug were better. The study found that participants appreciated the "interaction effect", that they felt it was less unfair to allow the drug if it affected the bottom 10% than if it affected everyone, and they were more eager to have the drug banned if it affected everyone. Participants were least tolerant of drugs that affected athletic performance and most tolerant of those that affected attention. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to reconcile two important, current intellectual traditions: Darwinism and social constructionism. We believe that these two schools have important points of contact that have been obscured because each school has feared that the other wanted to put it out of business. We try to show that both traditions have much to of offer psychology, a discipline that has often been too individualistic, too concerned with the private and the subjective. The spirit of American pragmatism can (...) be found in both camps; like the social constructivists, pragmatists focused on social transaction rather than internal happening, and like the Darwinian they were rooted in functionalism and the biological. (shrink)

While we are commonly told that the distinctive method of mathematics is rigorous proof, and that the special topic of mathematics is abstract structure, there has been no agreement among mathematicians, logicians, or philosophers as to just what either of these assertions means. John P. Burgess clarifies the nature of mathematical rigor and of mathematical structure, and above all of the relation between the two, taking into account some of the latest developments in mathematics, including the rise of experimental (...) mathematics on the one hand and computerized formal proofs on the other hand. Along the way, a great many historical developments in mathematics, philosophy, and logic are surveyed. Yet very little in the way of background knowledge on the part of the reader is presupposed. (shrink)

Numbers and other mathematical objects are exceptional in having no locations in space or time or relations of cause and effect. This makes it difficult to account for the possibility of the knowledge of such objects, leading many philosophers to embrace nominalism, the doctrine that there are no such objects, and to embark on ambitious projects for interpreting mathematics so as to preserve the subject while eliminating its objects. This book cuts through a host of technicalities that have obscured previous (...) discussions of these projects, and presents clear, concise accounts of a dozen strategies for nominalistic interpretation of mathematics, thus equipping the reader to evaluate each and to compare different ones. The authors also offer critical discussion, rare in the literature, of the aims and claims of nominalistic interpretation, suggesting that it is significant in a very different way from that usually assumed. (shrink)

The great logician Gottlob Frege attempted to provide a purely logical foundation for mathematics. His system collapsed when Bertrand Russell discovered a contradiction in it. Thereafter, mathematicians and logicians, beginning with Russell himself, turned in other directions to look for a framework for modern abstract mathematics. Over the past couple of decades, however, logicians and philosophers have discovered that much more is salvageable from the rubble of Frege's system than had previously been assumed. A variety of repaired systems have been (...) proposed, each a consistent theory permitting the development of a significant portion of mathematics. This book surveys the assortment of methods put forth for fixing Frege's system, in an attempt to determine just how much of mathematics can be reconstructed in each. John Burgess considers every proposed fix, each with its distinctive philosophical advantages and drawbacks. These systems range from those barely able to reconstruct the rudiments of arithmetic to those that go well beyond the generally accepted axioms of set theory into the speculative realm of large cardinals. For the most part, Burgess finds that attempts to fix Frege do less than advertised to revive his system. This book will be the benchmark against which future analyses of the revival of Frege will be measured. (shrink)

Philosophical Logic is a clear and concise critical survey of nonclassical logics of philosophical interest written by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject. After giving an overview of classical logic, John Burgess introduces five central branches of nonclassical logic, focusing on the sometimes problematic relationship between formal apparatus and intuitive motivation. Requiring minimal background and arranged to make the more technical material optional, the book offers a choice between an overview and in-depth study, and it balances (...) the philosophical and technical aspects of the subject.The book emphasizes the relationship between models and the traditional goal of logic, the evaluation of arguments, and critically examines apparatus and assumptions that often are taken for granted. Philosophical Logic provides an unusually thorough treatment of conditional logic, unifying probabilistic and model-theoretic approaches. It underscores the variety of approaches that have been taken to relevantistic and related logics, and it stresses the problem of connecting formal systems to the motivating ideas behind intuitionistic mathematics. Each chapter ends with a brief guide to further reading.Philosophical Logic addresses students new to logic, philosophers working in other areas, and specialists in logic, providing both a sophisticated introduction and a new synthesis. (shrink)

The most important distinctively American contribution to philosophy is the pragmatist tradition. In this short, lucid, and completely convincing exposition, Professor John P. Murphy begins by exploring the roots of this tradition as found in the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey, demonstrating its power and originality. Historians of philosophy will appreciate the insight Murphy brings to these figures, but the special value of this book lies in his discussion of how the pragmatist spirit has flowered in contemporary philosophy (...) in the work of Quine, Rorty, and Davidson.Throughout, Murphy emphasizes the logic and structure of the views held by these six philosophers and what it is they have in common that makes their work especially “pragmatist.” There is no better introduction to this historical tradition and perhaps no better way into the philosophies of the contemporaries whom Murphy discusses.Interest in pragmatist ideas is undergoing a revival at present, and this book shows us why. It will be of interest to both historians of philosophy and students of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper Sullins argues that in certain circumstances robots can be seen as real moral agents. A distinction is made between persons and moral agents such that, it is not necessary for a robot to have personhood in order to be a moral agent. I detail three requirements for a robot to be seen as a moral agent. The first is achieved when the robot is significantly autonomous from any programmers or operators of the machine. The second is when (...) one can analyze or explain the robot's behavior only by ascribing to it some predisposition or 'intention' to do good or harm. And finally, robot moral agency requires the robot to behave in a way that shows and understanding of responsibility to some other moral agent. Robots with all of these criteria will have moral rights as well as responsibilities regardless of their status as persons. (shrink)

Introduction A brief look at the competing present-day interpretations of Hume's philosophy will leave the uninitiated reader completely baffled. On the one hand , Hume is seen as a philosopher who attempted to analyse concepts with ...

Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today.

Adaptive mutation is defined as a process that, during nonlethal selections, produces mutations that relieve the selective pressure whether or not other, nonselected mutations are also produced. Examples of adaptive mutation or related phenomena have been reported in bacteria and yeast but not yet outside of microorganisms. A decade of research on adaptive mutation has revealed mechanisms that may increase mutation rates under adverse conditions. This article focuses on mechanisms that produce adaptive mutations in one strain of Escherichia coli, FC40. (...) These mechanisms include recombination-induced DNA replication, the placement of genes on a conjugal plasmid, and a transient mutator state. The implications of these various phenomena for adaptive evolution in microorganisms are discussed. BioEssays 22:1067–1074, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the (...) geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science. (shrink)

Used as the basis of the program at the Equinox Holistic Alternative School in Toronto, The Holistic Curriculum advocates for an integrative approach to teaching and learning with a focus on developing a deep connection between mind and body.

This volume reprints a dozen of the author’s papers, most with substantial postscripts, and adds one new one. The bulk of the material is on topics in philosophy of language, but there are also two papers on philosophy of mathematics written after the appearance of the author’s collected papers on that subject, and one on epistemology. As to the substance of Field’s contributions, limitations of space preclude doing much more below than indicating the range of issues addressed, and the general (...) orientation taken towards them. As to the style of his writing, it well exhibits the first of the two virtues, clarity and conciseness, that one looks for in philosophical prose. (shrink)