In a series of articles in this journal, Michael Tye (2002) and Paul Noordhof (2001, 2002) have sparred over the correct explanation of the putative invalidity of the following argument: the pain is in my fingertip; the fingertip is in my mouth; therefore, the pain is in my mouth. Whereas Tye explains the failure of the argument by stating that “pain “creates an intensional context, Noordhof maintains that the “in” in ‘the pain is in my fingertip’ is not spatial, but (...) has state-attributing character. In this paper, we offer a third account, explaining the failure of the argument through state-attributing pragmatic implicatures. Empirical evidence is provided in support of this account. (shrink)

This article proposes to elucidate Wilfrid Waluchow’s notion of constitutional morality by explaining how it relates to the classical common law idea of artificial reason. It examines how Waluchow’s effort to reconcile insights from the thought of H.L.A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin through the idea of constitutional morality is both reminiscent of the artificial reason of the common law and distinct from it. It shows that constitutional morality evokes the subtle union of custom and reason found in artificial reason, but (...) also that it proposes, under the influence of Hart’s notion of rule of recognition, a narrower understanding of law’s foundation in established practices, and that it gives, consistent with Dworkin’s vision of law as integrity, a greater theoretical scope to law’s rationality. (shrink)

What does it take to be a good democratic citizen? Many scholars emphasize that being a good citizen is difficult because there is so much citizens should know to participate responsibly in politics. These critics implicitly assume that citizens should aspire to be “omnicompetent citizens:” fully informed about the issues of the day, candidates’ stances on them, and relevant scientific knowledge. In this article, I advance an alternative, less demanding standard of good citizenship in which citizens focus their political concern (...) on just a few issues, or even a single one. I defend this model of specialized citizenship from the objection that it licenses myopic and irresponsible decision making by citizens with two complementary arguments. The first draws from the work of Bernard Williams to demonstrate the ethical permissibility of citizens making decisions based on even single issues when they implicate citizens’ fundamental commitments. The second argument suggests that such seemingly blinkered decision-making may, when operating systemically, improve democratic decision making via a division of labor between citizens specializing in different issues. I conclude that there may be less of a tension between the demands of ordinary life and those of a flourishing democracy than previously thought. (shrink)

An important and engaging book on a key argument in contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility.

One construal of convergent realism is that for each clear question, scientific inquiry eventually answers it. In this paper we adapt the techniques of formal learning theory to determine in a precise manner the circumstances under which this ideal is achievable. In particular, we define two criteria of convergence to the truth on the basis of evidence. The first, which we call EA convergence, demands that the theorist converge to the complete truth "all at once". The second, which we call (...) AE convergence, demands only that for every sentence in the theorist's language, there is a time at which the theorist settles the status of the sentence. The relative difficulties of these criteria are compared for effective and ineffective agents. We then examine in detail how the enrichment of an agent's hypothesis language makes the task of converging to the truth more difficult. In particular, we parametrize first-order languages by predicate and function symbol arity, presence or absence of identity, and quantifier prefix complexity. For nearly each choice of values of these parameters, we determine the senses in which effective and ineffective agents can converge to the complete truth on an arbitrary structure for the language. Finally, we sketch directions in which our learning theoretic setting can be generalized or made more realistic. (shrink)

Gegenstand des Bandes ist eine Profilierung der Kulturphilosophie mit dem Ziel ihrer notigen Selbstbehauptung gegenuber einem gegenwartigen Naturalismus. Ein zentrales Ratsel der Gegenwartsphilosophie ist das Verhaltnis unseres Bewusstseins, der Perspektive der ersten Person machtig und Urheber der Kultur zu sein, zu den Erkenntnissen der Kognitions- sowie der Evolutionswissenschaften seit Darwin. In diesen scheint von der Natur her auf die Kultur ein neues Licht zu fallen. Dies ist ebenso faszinierend wie interessant. Es ist aber auch eine Herausforderung: Der Begriff der "Welt" (...) wird naturwissenschaftlich praokkupiert, Extrapolationen ins Ontologische wie die "kausale Geschlossenheit der Welt" breiten sich auf Kosten fruherer, starker zuruckgenommener Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorien aus. Wie steht es demgegenuber mit den Beitragen von Kulturphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaften / Geisteswissenschaften? Deutlich wird in den Beitragen im Anschluss an Dilthey, Cassirer, Simmel und weitere Autoren: Die Notwendigkeit und der Eigencharakter kultureller Arbeit mussen offentlich wie in den Wissenschaften wieder bewusst werden. Mit Beitragen von Katharina Bauer, Jorn Bohr, Gunter Dux, Ralf Glitza, Kinga Golus, Julia Gruevska, Ralph Kohnen, Gudrun Kuhne-Bertram, Hans-Ulrich Lessing, Kevin Liggieri, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Annika Schlitte, Gunter Scholtz und Rene Torkler. (shrink)

This article challenges an argument from Tom Donaldson''s recent bookThe Ethics of International Business with a claim that distributive justice, deemed in many circles to impose a duty of mutual aid on individuals and nations, establishes a basis for holding multinational corporations to such a duty as well. The root idea I advocate is that Rawls'' theory of justice can be deployed — beyond its original intent yet in line with its spirit — to underwrite aprima facie obligation of international (...) business to render aid to ameliorate suffering on behalf of the inhabitants of developing countries in which they operate. (shrink)

Kevin Harris; Empowering Teachers: towards a justification for intervention, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 171–183.

Distributional semantic models (DSMs) are a primary method for distilling semantic information from corpora. However, a key question remains: What types of semantic relations among words do DSMs detect? Prior work typically has addressed this question using limited human data that are restricted to semantic similarity and/or general semantic relatedness. We tested eight DSMs that are popular in current cognitive and psycholinguistic research (positive pointwise mutual information; global vectors; and three variations each of Skip-gram and continuous bag of words (CBOW) (...) using word, context, and mean embeddings) on a theoretically motivated, rich set of semantic relations involving words from multiple syntactic classes and spanning the abstract–concrete continuum (19 sets of ratings). We found that, overall, the DSMs are best at capturing overall semantic similarity and also can capture verb–noun thematic role relations and noun–noun event-based relations that play important roles in sentence comprehension. Interestingly, Skip-gram and CBOW performed the best in terms of capturing similarity, whereas GloVe dominated the thematic role and event-based relations. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our results, make recommendations for users of these models, and demonstrate significant differences in model performance on event-based relations. (shrink)

I examine the process and outcomes of animal genetic manipulation (‘transgenesis’) with reference to its morally salient features. I consider several objections to transgenesis. I examine and reject the alleged intrinsic wrongness of ‘deliberate genetic sequence alteration’, as I do the notion that transgenesis may lead to human genetic manipulation. I examine the alleged wrongness of killing inherent in transgenesis, and suggest that the concept of ‘replaceability’ successfully justifies such killing, although not for entities deemed to possess ‘personhood’. I examine (...) ‘significant suffering’ associated with transgenesis and propose the radical conclusion that, although it would be wrong to prohibit animal genetic manipulation per se, utilitarians ought to support a ‘default prohibition’ on transgenic experiments that entail significant suffering. (shrink)

This paper is a critical discussion of Manuel Vargas’ Building Better Beings, focusing on the treatment of desert therein. By means of an analogy between morality and sport, I examine some seemingly peculiar implications of Vargas’ teleological and revisionary account of desert. I also consider some general questions of philosophical methodology provoked by revisionary approaches.

The Lottery Paradox has been thought to provide a reductio argument against probabilistic accounts of inductive inference. As a result, much work in artificial intelligence has concentrated on qualitative methods of inference, including default logics, which are intended to model some varieties of inductive inference. It has recently been shown that the paradox can be generated within qualitative default logics. However, John Pollock's qualitative system of defeasible inference, does avoid the Lottery Paradox by incorporating a rule designed specifically for that (...) purpose. I shall argue that Pollock's system instead succumbs to a worse disease: it fails to allow for induction at all. (shrink)

Postmodernity allows for no absolutes and no essence. Yet theology is concerned with the absolute, the essential. How then does theology sit within postmodernity? Is postmodern theology possible, or is such a concept a contradiction in terms? Should theology bother about postmodernism or just get on with its own thing? Can it? Theologians have responded in many different ways to the challenges posed by theories of postmodernity. In this introductory 2003 guide to a complex area, editor Kevin J. Vanhoozer (...) addresses the issue head on in a lively survey of what 'talk about God' might mean in a postmodern age, and vice versa. The book then offers examples of different types of contemporary theology in relation to postmodernity, while the second part examines the key Christian doctrines in postmodern perspective. Leading theologians contribute to this clear and informative Companion, which no student of theology should be without. (shrink)

Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and (...) 'What Is It?', an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans like Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. This brilliant and timely work asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of 'truthiness' where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art."--Dust jacket flap. (shrink)

With a few exceptions, F.H. Bradley has become a forgotten figure in the history of philosophy. I argue that Bradley’s thoughts on relations are at least relevant to assessing the status of nonreductive physicalism as a comprehensive metaphysic and, moreover, that they can be seen to raise some nontrivial challenges to nonreductive physicalism so understood. In pursuing this line of thought, I consider two of Bradley’s regresses in Appearance and Reality – the better-known “chain” regress and the lesser known “fission” (...) regress – and explain their relevance to nonreductive physicalism. (shrink)

About St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope John XXII said: “A man can derive more profit in a year from his books than from pondering all his life the teaching of others.” And Pope Pius XI added: “We now say to all who are desirous of the truth: ‘Go to St. Thomas.’ ” But when we do go to Thomas – when we open his massive Summa Theologica or another of his works – we’re quickly overwhelmed, even lost. If we find him (...) hard to read, how can we even begin to “think like Aquinas?” Now comes Kevin Vost — the best-selling author of The One-Minute Aquinas — armed with a recently rediscovered letter St. Thomas himself wrote – a brief letter to young novice monk giving practical, sage advice about how to study, how to think, and even how to live. In this letter written almost 800 years ago, St. Thomas reveals his unique powers of intellect and will, and explains how anyone can fathom and explain even the loftiest truths. Vost and St. Thomas will teach you how to dissect logical fallacies, heresies, and half-truths that continue to pollute our world with muddy thinking. Best of all, you’ll find a fully-illustrated set of exercises to improve your intellectual powers of memory, understanding, logical reasoning, shrewdness, foresight, circumspection, and practical wisdom. You’ll also learn: The four steps to training your memoryHow to know your mental powers – and their limitsWhy critical thinking alone is insufficient for reaching the truthTwenty common fallacies – and how to spot themThe key to effectively reading any bookHow to set your intellect free by avoiding worldly entanglementsHow to commit key truths to memory Pius XI called St. Thomas Aquinas the “model” for those who want to “pursue their studies to the best advantage and with the greatest profit to themselves.” Leo XIII urged us all to “follow the example of St. Thomas.” Over the centuries, dozens of other popes have praised him. Surely it is time to listen to these good men, time to “go to Thomas,” to learn to think like him, and, yes, even to live like him. (shrink)

In the twenty-first century the wonders of science show its magnificent potential for good. The scientific successes we enjoy are rooted in the modern way of thinking about physics. But success has fostered a myth that the dialectic of physics should be used in other areas; thus contributing to global calamities, such as Dialectical Materialism in politics and Behaviorism in psychology. In the opening paragraph of The Modern Mind the author proclaims-and indeed others agree-a crisis has been reached in our (...) evolving Western worldview. So the first requirement is a clear understanding of this development! In this work Kevin Wall illuminates this development in the light of philosophy, theology, science, art, and with reference to Greek and Scholastic minds-showing the real-world implications of Western speculative thought. (shrink)

According to a prominent line of thought, we can be physicalists, but not reductive physicalists, by holding that mental and other ‘higher-level’ or ‘nonbasic’ properties — properties that are not obviously physical properties — are all physically realized. Spelling this out requires an account of realization, an account of what it is for one property to realize another. And while several accounts of realization have been advanced in recent years,1 my interest here is in the ‘subset view,’ which has often (...) been invoked explicitly in defense of nonreductive physicalist positions.2 The subset view holds that property realization consists in the powers of one property having as a subset the powers of another; .. (shrink)

In the context of strategic interactions, individuals sometimes find themselves better off when they have fewer options. This mechanism is known under the name of ‘strategic commitment’, as it is usually the individuals themselves who ‘commit’ to following a certain course of action by restricting their options; but that is not necessary. I explain how a paternalistic intervention may be conceived where it is a third party who paternalistically restricts rational individuals’ choices to improve their welfare. This kind of intervention, (...) which I call ‘strategic paternalism’, contradicts the narrative according to which welfare economics is incompatible with paternalism because it assumes individual rationality, which would make paternalism irrelevant. To prove this point, I show why and in what sense this ‘strategic paternalism’ deserves to be called that way. (shrink)

The categorical imperative inherent in Kant’s ethics has had indubitable historical influence on societies worldwide whether in the form of laws, democracy or public deliberation. The Toronto Van Attack of 2018 and its subsequent legal trial is a case example that shows how the categorical imperative can be applied to assist in understanding the reasoning for the case’s guilty verdict. This paper will convey the applicability of the categorical imperative for examining criminal case studies by closing the gap between ethical (...) theory and practice. Such closure will be shown to assist in understanding why a perpetrator of a crime can be found guilty of following a hypothetical imperative to base their actions. The rationale for the verdict in this case will be shown to be based on the perpetrator’s responsibility in the form of maintaining autonomy despite having an autism diagnosis. The perpetrator will be shown to have acted on an irrational will and yet was treated in the legal sense as a rational individual. Such rationality was maintained despite complications with their autonomy in the form of relativism and ethical solipsism. (shrink)

Natural scientific views on the human being have the tendency to reduce selfhood toa static object. This tendency arguably derives from the need to objectify the present in which the human being is found. Phenomenology avoids such a reduction by engaging with the present instead of distancing from it for the sake of analysis. This beneficence that derives froma phenomenological view of reality is argued to be a warranted view a counseling therapist should adopt. Not only can a therapist who (...) involves phenomenological perspectives in their practice succeed in viewing their clients non-instrumentally, but such a therapist can also “Be” genuine. The paper conceives of the therapist capable of performing these phenomenological tasks in therapy as adopting a mode of Being which we highlight as akin to the ancient concept: hypostasis. This conception in turn is shown to have epistemological ramifications for the meaning of “understanding”, which is shown quite suitably in the example of therapeutic presence. Heidegger’s Dasein serves as conceptual example of self in the paper to elucidate the connection between hypostasis and understanding throughout. (shrink)

Magical ersatzism is the view that possible worlds are primitive abstract entities. In On the Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis presented what appeared to many to be a devastating argument against magical ersatzism. In this paper, I show that Lewis’ central argument does not succeed. Magical ersatzism remains a viable theory of possible worlds.

'This volume will make a lasting contribution to how we address the dilemmas that human rights theory and practice encounter - for instance, between democracy and human rights, negative and positive rights, or individual and group rights. Philosophers have become indispensable to lawyers' arguments about why human rights matter, and how they must be interpreted: this book superbly illustrates why.' - Olivier De Schutter, University of Louvain, Belgium and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

Hermes on Two Wheels shows the dynamic world of the bicycle messenger through a sociological lens, based on a five-year participant observation study. Beginning with the experiences of messengers themselves and moving to describe the structural settings of those experiences, the research shows how messengers work within a political-economic system that devalues semi-skilled labor and strips people of emotional fulfillment. The voluntary risk-taking of messengers becomes a means of achieving such emotional fulfillment as well as making a living, while their (...) stylistic expressions pay dividends in cultural scrip rather than money. Through their work, messengers help to reproduce and maintain the structures of society while also constructing a vibrant, rebellious, politicized subculture that has come to represent the new urban hipster, an image continually under threat of co-optation. (shrink)

We further develop the mathematical theory of causal interventions, extending earlier results of Korb, Twardy, Handfield, & Oppy, (2005) and Spirtes, Glymour, Scheines (2000). Some of the skepticism surrounding causal discovery has concerned the fact that using only observational data can radically underdetermine the best explanatory causal model, with the true causal model appearing inferior to a simpler, faithful model (cf. Cartwright, (2001). Our results show that experimental data, together with some plausible assumptions, can reduce the space of viable explanatory (...) causal models to one. (shrink)

According to a widespread tradition in philosophical theology, God is necessarily simple and eternal. One objection to this view of God's nature is that it would rule out God having foreknowledge of non-determined, free human actions insofar as simplicity and eternity are incompatible with God's knowledge being causally dependent on those actions. According to this view, either (a) God must causally determine the free actions of human agents, thus leading to a theological version of compatibilism, or (b) God cannot know, (...) and thus cannot respond to, the free actions of human agents. In the present paper, I argue that one can consistently maintain that God is not causally dependent on anything, even for His knowledge, without being committed to either (a) or (b). In other words, an eternal God can know the free actions of agents even if libertarianism is true. (shrink)

Dual labor market theory, developed as an explanation of underemployment and poverty within the economy, may also be applied to the illicit economy of crime. Criminal careers are differentiated into a primary sector, with occupational stability, low failure rate, and high chances of advancement; and a secondary sector, with instability, high failure rate, and lack of "market" control. The attraction of criminal careers, the likelihood of incarceration, and the effects of law enforcement are best understood in these contexts.

Public relations practitioners place a premium on loyalty - particularly in terms of cultivating relationships. However, little scholarly research has been done on the subject. This essay analyzes loyalty in terms of organizational deterioration and decline. The ethical dimensions of Hirschman's concept of "exit, voice, and loyalty, " and Royce's notion about loyalty, are explored, as is the concept of "loyalty to loyalty. " The essay concludes with a 7-step model intended to help practitioners determine the demands of ethical loyalty.

This is not a research project so much as a kind of “personal manifesto” on meta-ethics, or my personal take on how to best think about and improve morality. Since my take on “morality” is not necessarily meant to be compatible with current or past understandings, I am amenable to calling it “schmorality” instead. I argue that (sch)morality can be taken to be teleological by definition, but that the objects of comparison for what produces the best results value-wise need not (...) be taken as actions, but rather the holistic approaches to living and decision making themselves. The position therefore does not yield “consequentialism” in the usual sense. I further explain how this position is compatible with the emergence of something like deontological constraints from within a teleological approach to (sch)morality, and speculate about further likely consequences of this approach. (shrink)

Dan Greco and Jason Turner wrote two fantastic critiques of my book, The Construction of Logical Space. Greco’s critique suggests that the book can be given a Kuhnian interpretation, with a Carnapian twist. Here I embrace that interpretation. Turner criticizes one of the views I develop in the book. Here I identify an avenue of resistance.

Presburger arithmetic is the first-order theory of the natural numbers with addition. We characterize sets that can be defined by a Presburger formula as exactly the sets whose characteristic functions can be represented by rational generating functions; a geometric characterization of such sets is also given. In addition, ifp= are a subset of the free variables in a Presburger formula, we can define a counting functiong to be the number of solutions to the formula, for a givenp. We show that (...) every counting function obtained in this way may be represented as, equivalently, either a piecewise quasi-polynomial or a rational generating function. Finally, we translate known computational complexity results into this setting and discuss open directions. (shrink)

The article first discusses the presence among Christians in Roman Africa of "biblical" writings that are not found in the current canon of Scripture. This is followed by a review of what is known of the Manichaean use of extra-canonical material in general, particularly within the Roman Empire, and especially of the pseudepigraphical Acts of the Apostles. Finally, the article focuses on the use among Manichaeans in Roman Africa of this pseudepigraphic literature, especially the Acts of the Apostles. In all (...) cases, the article focuses on cases of a confirmed pseudepigraphic presence, rather than on mere conjectures about it. (shrink)

Environmental pollution played a central role in launching the environmental movement during the twentieth century. While some environmental ethicists have worried that concerns about pollution reflect a relatively “shallow” form of environmentalism focused on the concerns of the wealthy, pollution is also a significant threat to many disadvantaged groups, citizens of low-income countries, and non-human organisms. Ethical issues arise both in the course of scientific research to identify harmful pollutants and in policy decisions about how to regulate them. New strategies (...) are needed for generating scientific research that adequately reflects the concerns and priorities of the public as a whole rather than the values of polluting industries. Creative policy approaches are also needed so that we can identify harmful pollutants more quickly and avoid generating them in the first place. (shrink)