Max Weber's fragmentary writings on social status suggest that differentiation on this basis should disappear as capitalism develops. However, many of Weber's examples of status refer to the United States, which Weber held to be the epitome of capitalist development. Weber hints at a second form of status, one generated by capitalism, which might reconcile this contradiction, and later theorists emphasize the continuing importance of status hierarchies. This article argues that such theories have missed one of the most important forms (...) of contemporary status: celebrity. Celebrity is an omnipresent feature of contemporary society, blazing lasting impressions in the memories of all who cross its path. In keeping with Weber's conception of status, celebrity has come to dominate status “honor,” generate enormous economic benefits, and lay claim to certain legal privileges. Compared with other types of status, however, celebrity is status on speed. It confers honor in days, not generations; it decays over time, rather than accumulating; and it demands a constant supply of new recruits, rather than erecting barriers to entry. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks has recently argued that substance dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness do not cohere well with the Incarnation. He has also claimed that physicalism about human persons avoids this problem, which should lead Christians to be physicalists. In this paper, I argue that there are plausible dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness that avoid his objections. Furthermore, I argue that physicalism is inconsistent with the Incarnation.

Large‐scale characterization of the human microbiota has largely focused on Western adults, yet these populations may be uncharacteristic because of their diets and lifestyles. In particular, the rise of “Western diseases” may in part stem from reduced exposure to, or even loss of, microbes with which humans have coevolved. Here, we review beneficial microbes associated with pathogen resistance, highlighting the emerging role of complex microbial communities in protecting against disease. We discuss ways in which modern lifestyles and practices may deplete (...) physiologically important microbiota, and explore prospects for reintroducing or encouraging the growth of beneficial microbes to promote the restoration of healthy microbial ecosystems. (shrink)

Many have thought that there is a problem with causal commerce between immaterial souls and material bodies. In Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim attempts to spell out that problem. Rather than merely posing a question or raising a mystery for defenders of substance dualism to answer or address, he offers a compelling argument for the conclusion that immaterial souls cannot causally interact with material bodies. We offer a reconstruction of that argument that hinges on two premises: Kim’s Dictum (...) and the Nowhere Man principle. Kim’s Dictum says that causation requires a spatial relation. Nowhere Man says that souls can’t be in space. By our lights, both premises can be called into question. We’ll begin our evaluation of the argument by pointing out some consequences of Kim’s Dictum. For some, these will be costs. We will then present two defeaters for Kim’s Dictum and a critical analysis of Kim’s case for Nowhere Man. The upshot is that Kim’s argument against substance dualism fails. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAssuming there are fictional objects, what sorts of properties do they have? Intuitively, most of their properties involve being represented—appearing in works of fiction, being depicted as clever, being portrayed by actors, being admired or feared, and so on. But several philosophers, including Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, Kendall Walton, and Amie Thomasson, argue that even if there are fictional objects, they are not really represented in some or all of these cases. I reconstruct four kinds of arguments for this (...) unexpected conclusion; they concern the semantics of names, pragmatic force, creation, and representations’ qualitative content. But I find all the arguments flawed. I then argue for the contrary, employing a new perspective: representation of fictional objects begins with the works of fiction that originate them. A work of fiction represents its “native” objects because our culture bestows that property on it. I sketch conditions for such property bestowal and argue that they are satisfied in this case. (shrink)

I consider two views that combine different elements of general theistic replies to natural evil, those of Peter van Inwagen and William Hasker. I end with a Hasker-style defense – one that, unlike Hasker's, denies the existence of pointless natural evils – and some brief observations on the direction of future debate.

I defend and clarify my arguments in "Real Representation of Fictional Objects" in response to criticisms from Joseph Sartorelli. In particular, I clarify why Kripke's notion of "levels of language" and a pragmatic principle suggested by van Inwagen do not support the view that works of fiction generate fictional objects but do not represent them.

This article traces the meaning of κατάλυμά and πανδοχεῖον in available Roman-Egypt papyri, the LXX, early-Jewish literature, and Greek writings to determine the meaning of πανδοχεῖον [inn] used in Luke 10:34. It is argued that a lexical study of κατάλυμά and πανδοχεῖον and available information on travel in the ancient world indicate that there is no evidence for the so-called non-commercial inns in the ancient world and that commercial inns and innkeepers, in principle, were all ‘bad’. In conclusion, the (...) implications of this understanding of πανδοχεῖον and πανδοκεύς (Lk 10:34, 35) for the possible intended meaning of the parable are discussed, a conclusion that begs further research regarding the identity of the protagonist in the parable. (shrink)

In this review article, the book by J.H. van Wyk, Augustine: A study on the ethics of the church father from Africa is presented and discussed. Short overviews of the content of the six chapters are given. They are: Introduction – the necessity for a book on Augustine’s ethics in Afrikaans, Orientation – an overview of his life and works, Grounding – the relationship between dogmatics and ethics, Typology – the character of his ethics, Themes – marriage and sexual ethics, (...) political ethics and animal ethics, Findings – evaluation of Augustine’s ethics. Support is given to the argument that Augustine is an important forerunner to the Reformation. Information is provided on Augustine and the early years of the Reformation in Wittenberg. Critical remarks are made about the author’s understanding of the relationship between faith and works, dogmatics and ethics. The Lutheran understanding of this topic is presented as an important alternative to the Reformed version that is defended in this book. Finally, attention is given to Augustine’s ‘theory of the two cities’. Also in this regard advice is given from one of Luther’s publication. His exposition of Mary’s Song in Luke 1:46–55 is used as an example of how a witness to the government could look like. (shrink)

Syncrisis as literary motif in the story about the grown-up child Jesus in the temple (Lk 2:41–52 and the Thomas tradition): The article explores hermeneutical solutions for the negative response from the child Jesus towards his biological parents in the Lukan temple story (Lk 2:41–52). The ‘wisdom’ of the child who acts in an ‘adult-like’ way is interpreted as a syncrisis. This literary motif is explained by an analysis of the contrasting positive and negative acts of the child Jesus towards (...) teachers of the Torah in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (shrink)

This article examines the phrase ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου in Matthew and Luke’s versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the light of Ewe-Ghanaian eschatological vision. Theoretically, it uses a combination of the historical–critical and indigenous Mother Tongue Biblical Hermeneutical approaches to explore the implication of βασιλεία for the Ewe-Ghanaian Christian. The article discusses the diversity in the interpretations of the text from the early church to the modern and postmodern periods in Christian history and argues that this diversity has (...) occurred as a result of the fluidity of the eschatological visions in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and that the linear eschatological vision described by the church is inconsistent with the cyclical vision in Ewe cosmology. This dual eschatological vision creates a dilemma in the Ewe-Ghanaian Christian’s understanding of the eternal states. Finally, it is argued that to resolve this eschatological dilemma is to clearly define the place of Ewe eschatological vision in Christian eschatology and interpreting the former as replica of the latter. (shrink)

The issues, raised in Żukowski (arXiv:0809.0115v1, 2008), concerning the relevance of the von Neumann theorem for the single-system’s quantumness test proposed in Alicki and Van Ryn (J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41:062001, 2008) and performed for the case of single photon polarization in Brida et al. (Opt. Express 16:11750, 2008; arXiv:0811.3376, 2008) and the usefulness of Bell’s inequality for testing the idea of macroscopic quantum systems are discussed in some details. Finally, the proper quantum mechanical description of the experiment with (...) polarized photon beams is presented. (shrink)

Van Aarde, AG - Scheffler, EH 1988. Suffering in Luke's Gospel (Bladsy 183).Hattingh, LJ - Steenkamp, JJ 1987. Die Wêreldraad van Kerke se bemoeienis met die rassevraagstuk in Suid-Afrika. 'n Historiese analitiese oorsig van die periode 1950-1970 (Bladsy 190).

Painting can only be thought in relation to the image. And yet, with (and within) painting what continues to endure is the image of painting. While this is staged explicitly in, for example, paintings of St. Luke by artists of the Northern Renaissance—e.g., Rogier van der Weyden, Jan Gossaert, and Simon Marmion—the same concerns are also at work within both the practices as well as the contemporaneous writings that define central aspects of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this (...) paper is to begin an investigation into the process by which painting stages the activity of painting. This forms part of a project whose aim is an investigation of the way philosophy should respond to the essential historicity of art (where the latter is understood philosophically). (shrink)

Institutional review boards, tasked with facilitating ethical research, are often pulled in competing directions. In what we call the protection-inclusion dilemma, we acknowledge the tensions IRBs face in aiming to both protect potential research participants from harm and include under-represented populations in research. In this manuscript, we examine the history of protectionism that has dominated research ethics oversight in the United States, as well as two responses to such protectionism: inclusion initiatives and critiques of the term vulnerability. We look at (...) what we know about IRB decision-making in relation to protecting and including “vulnerable” groups in research and examine the lack of regulatory guidance related to this dilemma, which encourages protection over inclusion within IRB practice. Finally, we offer recommendations related to how IRBs might strike a better balance between inclusion and protection in research ethics oversight. (shrink)

We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one's credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one's peers' reported credences if one's likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting results. 4. They (...) preserve shared agreement about independence in a wide range of cases. 5. They commute with conditionalization and with multiple peer updates. Importantly, these rules have a surprising property that we call synergy - peer testimony of credences can provide mutually supporting evidence raising an individual's credence higher than any peer's initial prior report. At first, this may seem to be a strike against them. We argue, however, that synergy is actually a desirable feature and the failure of other updating rules to yield synergy is a strike against them. (shrink)

Consider people’s ordinary concept of belief. This concept seems to pick out a particular psychological state. Indeed, one natural view would be that the concept of belief works much like the concepts one finds in cognitive science – not quite as rigorous or precise, perhaps, but still the same basic type of notion. But now suppose we turn to other concepts that people ordinarily use to understand the mind. Suppose we consider the concept happiness. Or the concept love. How are (...) these concepts to be understood? One obvious hypothesis would be that they are best understood as being more or less like the concept of belief. Maybe these concepts, too, pick out a particular mental state and thereby enable people to predict, explain and understand others’ behavior. We will argue that this hypothesis is mistaken. Instead, we suggest that the different concepts people use to understand the mind are fundamentally different from each other. Some of these concepts do indeed serve simply to pick out a particular mental state, but others allow a role for evaluative judgments. So, for example, our claim will be that when people are wondering whether a given agent is truly ‘happy’ or ‘in love,’ they are not merely trying to figure out whether this agent has a particular sort of mental state. They are also concerned in a central way with evaluating the agent herself. In short, our aim is to point to a striking sort of difference between the different concepts that people use to pick out psychological attitudes. We will be.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Joseph Halpern and Judea Pearl draw upon structural equation models to develop an attractive analysis of ‘actual cause’. Their analysis is designed for the case of deterministic causation. I show that their account can be naturally extended to provide an elegant treatment of probabilistic causation. 1Introduction 2Preemption 3Structural Equation Models 4The Halpern and Pearl Definition of ‘Actual Cause’ 5Preemption Again 6The Probabilistic Case 7Probabilistic Causal Models 8A Proposed Probabilistic Extension of Halpern and Pearl’s Definition 9Twardy and Korb’s Account 10Probabilistic (...) Fizzling 11Conclusion. (shrink)

Chimpanzee and hunter-gatherer intergroup aggression differ in important ways, including humans having the ability to form peaceful relationships and alliances among groups. This paper nevertheless evaluates the hypothesis that intergroup aggression evolved according to the same functional principles in the two species—selection favoring a tendency to kill members of neighboring groups when killing could be carried out safely. According to this idea chimpanzees and humans are equally risk-averse when fighting. When self-sacrificial war practices are found in humans, therefore, they result (...) from cultural systems of reward, punishment, and coercion rather than evolved adaptations to greater risk-taking. To test this “chimpanzee model,” we review intergroup fighting in chimpanzees and nomadic hunter-gatherers living with other nomadic hunter-gatherers as neighbors. Whether humans have evolved specific psychological adaptations for war is unknown, but current evidence suggests that the chimpanzee model is an appropriate starting point for analyzing the biological and cultural evolution of warfare. (shrink)

Until recently, many philosophers took Causal Decision Theory to be more successful than its rival, Evidential Decision Theory. Things have changed, however, with a renewed concern that cases involving an extreme form of decision instability are counterexamples to CDT :392–403, 1984; Egan in Philos Rev 116:93–114, 2007). Most prominent among those cases of extreme decision instability is the Psychopath Button, due to Andy Egan; in that case, CDT recommends a seemingly absurd act that almost certainly results in your death. This (...) renewed attention to decision instability has spurned an array of modifications to and rejections of CDT. I argue, however, that the Psychopath Button and its ilk are no counterexamples to CDT. That is, given the causalist’s commitments in Newcomb Problems, they already have the tools to justify CDT’s verdict in Egan-style cases of extreme decision instability. I first argue that there is no reason to think the Psychopath Button is a counterexample to CDT; in particular, many philosophers have placed too much weight on pre-theoretic intuition in Egan-cases, and apart from pre-theoretic intuition, arguments against CDT in cases of extreme decision instability are flawed. My second claim is that the causalist can provide good reasons for following CDT in cases of extreme decision instability. I present a new case, the Two Button Defense, that highlights precisely why the causalist can reasonably follow CDT in even the Psychopath Button. CDT therefore stands as a viable decision theory, without need for modification, restriction, or rejection. (shrink)

Philosophers have spent a great deal of time debating whether intransitive preferences can be rational. I present a risky decision that poses a challenge for the defender of intransitivity. The defender of intransitivity faces a trilemma and must either: (i) reject the rationality of intransitive preferences, (ii) deny State-wise Dominance, or (iii) accept the bizarre verdict that you can be required to pay to relabel the tickets of a fair lottery. If we take the first horn, then we have a (...) synchronic refutation of intransitivity, an improvement on widely criticized diachronic arguments. I sketch possible responses that may rescue intransitivity and argue that each response is possible but generates an explanatory debt. I conclude by showing how the challenge here clarifies the foundations of decision theory without transitivity, conditional on some explanatory debt being payable. (shrink)

This Element provides an accessible introduction to the contemporary philosophy of causation. It introduces the reader to central concepts and distinctions and to key tools drawn upon in the contemporary debate. The aim is to fuel the reader's interest in causation, and to equip them with the resources to contribute to the debate themselves. The discussion is historically informed and outward-looking. 'Historically informed' in that concise accounts of key historical contributions to the understanding of causation set the stage for an (...) examination of the latest research. 'Outward looking' in that illustrations are provided of how the philosophy of causation relates to issues in the sciences, law, and elsewhere. The aim is to show why the study of causation is of critical importance, besides being fascinating in its own right. (shrink)

While Plantinga has famously argued that acceptance of neo-Darwinian theory commits one to the rejection of naturalism, Plantinga’s argument is vulnerable to an objection developed by Evan Fales. Not only does Fales’ objection undermine Plantinga’s original argument, it establishes a general challenge which any attempt to revitalize Plantinga’s argument must overcome. After briefly laying out the contours of this challenge, we attempt to meet it by arguing that because a purely naturalistic account of our etiology cannot explain the correlation between (...) our preference for simplicity and simplicity’s ability to serve as a veridical method of theory selection, the scientific realist is committed to the rejection of naturalism. (shrink)

A great challenge of the twenty-first century is the danger of conflict between persons, peoples, and cultures, among and within societies. In _A Common Human Ground_, Claes Ryn explores the nature of this problem and sets forth a theory about what is necessary for peaceful relations to be possible. Many in the Western world trust in “democracy,” “capitalism,” “liberal tolerance,” “scientific progress,” or “general enlightenment” to handle this problem. Although each of these, properly defined, may contribute toward alleviating disputes, Ryn (...) argues that the problem is much more complex and demanding than is usually recognized. He reasons that, most fundamentally, good relations among individuals and nations have moral and cultural preconditions. What can predispose them to mutual respect and peace? One Western philosophical tradition, for which Plato set the pattern, maintains that the only way to genuine unity is for historical diversity to yield to universality. The implication of this view for a multicultural world would be a peace that requires that cultural distinctiveness be effaced as far as possible and replaced with a universal culture. A very different Western philosophical tradition denies the existence of universality altogether. It is represented today by postmodernist multiculturalism—a view that leaves unanswered the question as to how conflict between diverse groups might be averted. Ryn questions both of these traditions, arguing for the potential union of universality and particularity. He contends that the two need not be enemies, but in fact need each other. Cultivating individual and national particularities is potentially compatible with strengthening and enriching our common humanity. This volume embraces the notion of universality, while at the same time historicizing it. Using wide-ranging examples, Ryn presents a firmly sustained and systematic argument centering on this central issue. His approach is interdisciplinary, discussing not only political ideas, but also fiction, drama, and other arts. Scholarly and philosophical, but not specialized, this book will appeal to general readers as well as intellectuals. (shrink)

We investigate whether standard counterfactual analyses of causation imply that the outcomes of space-like separated measurements on entangled particles are causally related. Although it has sometimes been claimed that standard CACs imply such a causal relation, we argue that a careful examination of David Lewis’s influential counterfactual semantics casts doubt on this. We discuss ways in which Lewis’s semantics and standard CACs might be extended to the case of space-like correlations.

In rebellion against low‐dimensional (e.g., two‐factor) theories in psychology, the authors make the case for high‐dimensional theories. This change in perspective requires a shift towards a focus on computation and quantitative reasoning.

It is no longer a revelation that companies have some responsibility to uphold human rights. However, delineating the boundaries of the relationship between business and human rights is more vexed. What is it that we are asking corporations to assume responsibility for and how far does that responsibility extend? This article focuses on the extent to which economic, social and cultural rights fall within a corporation's sphere of responsibility. It then analyses how corporations may be held accountable for violations of (...) such rights. Specifically, the article considers the use of soft law as a protective mechanism; it also details how victims of harmful corporate behaviour are using litigation (pursuant to ATCA and common law domestic causes of action) to seek redress and recognition of the harms they have directly or indirectly experienced. The article concludes with an analysis of Professor Ruggie's (the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of transnational corporations and human rights) 2008 and 2009 Reports in which it is suggested that a respect-based framework must be interpreted as imposing proactive requirements on companies to prevent the infringement of human rights. Future efforts must also be directed towards the recognition of a specialised complementary corporate responsibility to protect human rights. (shrink)

For several decades, public political discourses on ‘welfare dependency’ have failed to recognise that welfare states are not the source of economic dependence, but rather reconfigure economic dependencies in a specific way. This article distinguishes four senses of ‘economic dependence’ that can help to clarify what is missing from these discourses, and what is at stake in political and legal decisions about how we may economically depend upon one another. While feminist, republican and egalitarian philosophical work has examined the problems (...) of dependence on states, in families and in markets, the present approach adds a further dimension to our cultural and political concerns with economic dependence: it argues that it is reasonable and useful to consider the economic dependence of the economically powerful. Doing so requires a clarification of the ‘varieties of dependence’ that exist in contemporary societies and economies, and the recognition that legal and political choices regarding social and economic justice are often about choosing between varieties of dependence, not about escaping dependence entirely. (shrink)

Fanatics claim that we must give up guaranteed goods in pursuit of extremely improbable Utopia. Recently, Wilkinson has defended Fanaticism by arguing that nonfanatics must violate at least one plausible rational requirement. We reject Fanaticism. We show that by taking stakes-sensitive risk attitudes seriously, we can resist the core premises in Wilkinson’s argument.

This article argues that history played a larger role in the thought of Gottlob Frege than has usually been acknowledged. Frege’s logical writings frequently employed statements about the past as examples that included references to historical persons. Frege also described history as a science and argued that historical propositions could support valid inferences and reliably identify historical persons and events. But Frege’s eternalist theory of reference, designed primarily for formal concepts and objects, struggled to accommodate such propositions. Identifying an objective (...) referent for the subjectivity of historical actors was particularly problematic. The article suggests that Frege’s writings are interesting for the philosopher of history for at least two reasons: first, his work is clarificatory when considering the key features that historical propositions must have to count as objective knowledge, and second, it foreshadowed the issues with historicity that analytical philosophy experienced in the twentieth century. It concludes that the problems Frege raised exposed the need for a new concept of inter-subjectivity to replace his own Platonic foundation for objectivity. (shrink)

This paper proposes an ecological approach to the perception and interpretation of signs. The theory draws upon the ecological approach of James Gibson . It is proposed that cultural and natural perception can both be explained in terms of the direct pick-up of structured information and the Gibsonian concept of affordances without having to invoke a sharp distinction between direct and indirect perception. The application of the theory is exemplified through attention to language and to the visual and audio arts.