It has been suggested that a substitutional semantics for quantification theory lends itself to nominalistic aims. I should like in this paper to explore that claim.

Michael Huemer argues that cross-cultural convergence toward liberal moral values is evidence of objective moral progress, and by extension, evidence for moral realism. Nathan Cofnas claims to debunk Huemer’s argument by contending that convergence toward liberal moral values can be better explained by ‘two related non-truth-tracking processes’: self-interest and its long-term tendency to result in social conditions conducive to greater empathy. This article argues that although Cofnas successfully debunks Huemer’s convergence argument for one influential form of moral realism – Robust (...) Moral Realism, which holds that moral facts are non-natural, stance-independent normative facts – Cofnas’s debunking argument broadly supports a second type of moral realism: Enlightened Self-Interest Realism, the view that moral facts are reducible to stance-dependent requirements of instrumental (‘means-end’) rationality. Finally, this article argues that insofar as different Enlightened Self-Interest Realist theories make specific predictions about the intra- and inter-personal mechanisms behind moral convergence toward liberalism, empirical observations of cross-cultural convergence can provide independent support for Enlightened Self-Interest Realism. I conclude that this is an important mark in favor of Enlightened Self-Interest Realism over Robust Moral Realism. (shrink)

In the de Officiis we have, save for the latter Philippics, the great orator's last contribution to literature. The last, sad, troubled years of his busy life could not be given to his profession; and he turned his never-resting thoughts to the second love of his student days and made Greek philosophy a possibility for Roman readers. The senate had been abolished; the courts had been closed. His occupation was gone; but Cicero could not surrender himself to idleness. In those (...) days of distraction (46-43 b.c.) he produced for publication almost as much as in all his years of active life.The liberators had been able to remove the tyrant, but they could not restore the republic. Cicero's own life was in danger from the fury of mad Antony and he left Rome about the end of March, 44 b.c. He dared not even stop permanently in any one of his various country estates, but, wretched, wandered from one of his villas to another nearly all the summer and autumn through. He would not suffer himself to become a prey to his overwhelming sorrow at the death of the republic and the final crushing of the hopes that had risen with Caesar's downfall, but worked at the highest tension on his philosophical studies. (shrink)

Abstract The current accountability system for private military and security contractors (PMSCs) is woefully inadequate, and mere enhancements in oversight cannot hope to remedy that failing. I contend that once we recognize the kind of accountability required of PMSCs, we will realize that radical changes in the foundational relationship between PMSCs and the state are required. More specifically, in order to be appropriately accountable, members of PMSCs must become a part of or, at the very least, directly responsible to the (...) legitimate authoritative military or police structures, and there must be a clear and precise delineation of responsibility among public officials for holding individual members of PMSCs criminally liable. (shrink)

Is it impossible for a person to do something intentionally without knowing that she is doing it? The phenomenon of self-deceived agency might seem to show otherwise. Here the agent is not lying, yet disavows a correct description of her intentional action. This disavowal might seem expressive of ignorance. However, I show that the self-deceived agent does know what she's doing. I argue that we should understand the factors that explain self-deception as masking rather than negating the practical knowledge characteristic (...) of intentional action. This masking takes roughly the following form: when we are deceiving ourselves about what we are intentionally doing, we don't think about our action because it's painful to do so. (shrink)

The paper offers a three-premise argument that a person with first-hand experience of possession and exorcism, such as an exorcist, can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. “Exorcism involves a process by which the exorcist comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” Cited for are the Gospels, the Roman Ritual, some modern cases of exorcism, and exorcism practices in non-Christian contexts. “If defeaters are absent, the exorcist may treat as reliable the process by which (...) he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” For a case is offered that we have a reliable ability to identify when testimony is being offered and when it is being offered by particular types of agents, what is termed testifier-identification. “In many cases of exorcism, defeaters are absent.” An inductive case is given for by responding to possible defeaters, including several suggested recently by David Kyle Johnson. Therefore, in many cases of exorcism the exorcist may treat as reliable the processes by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon, and so can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (shrink)

Introduction -- Creative experience as the birthplace of the transcendent -- On refinding God during chemotherapy -- Reflections on moments of grace -- On the quiet virtue of humility -- Summoned to courage -- Maintaining personal dignity in the face of the mass society -- On fidelity and betrayal in love relationships -- The kiss.

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for veganism, (...) this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that improving democratic politics requires keeping emotion out of it. Marcus advances the provocative claim that the tradition in democratic theory of treating emotion and reason as hostile opposites is misguided and leads contemporary theorists to misdiagnose the current state of American democracy. Instead of viewing the presence of emotion in politics as a failure of rationality and therefore as a failure of citizenship, Marcus argues, democratic theorists need to understand that emotions (...) are in fact a prerequisite for the exercise of reason and thus essential for rational democratic deliberation and political judgment. Attempts to purge emotion from public life not only are destined to fail, but ultimately would rob democracies of a key source of revitalization and change. Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, Marcus shows how emotion functions generally and what role it plays in politics. In contrast to the traditional view of emotion as a form of agitation associated with belief, neuroscience reveals it to be generated by brain systems that operate largely outside of awareness. Two of these systems, "disposition" and "surveillance," are especially important in enabling emotions to produce habits, which often serve a positive function in democratic societies. But anxiety, also a preconscious emotion, is crucial to democratic politics as well because it can inhibit or disable habits and thus clear a space for the conscious use of reason and deliberation. If we acknowledge how emotion facilitates reason and is "cooperatively entangled" with it, Marcus concludes, then we should recognize sentimental citizens as the only citizens really capable of exercising political judgment and of putting their decisions into action. (shrink)

Though ‘evil’ is often used loosely as merely the generic opposite of ‘morally good’, used precisely it is the worst possible term of opprobrium available. In this essay it is taken as applying primarily to persons, secondarily to conduct; evil deeds must flow from the volition to do something evil. An evil action is one so horrendously bad that no ordinary decent human being can conceive of doing it, and an evil person is one who knowingly wills or orders such (...) actions. Malignant evil—doing evil because it is evil—is not just possible but real, and is one of several kinds of evil delineated. There are incidental discussions of cruelty, Rosenbaum on Explaining Hitler, Baumeister on Evil, and Benn on wickedness. Footnotes1 Dedicated to Alan Gewirth, in honour of his 90th birthday, and in appreciation of his superb, illuminating, and ground-breaking philosophical work over many years. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the literal and metaphoric senses in which anthropology's accumulation of knowledge through the production of ethnography on the world's peoples can be considered an archive. The relevance of this concept to ethnography has a very different past, present, and emergent associations. The Human Area Relations Files project as visionary science dependent on the making of an archive of ethnography contrasts with the uses of the past ethnographic record in the pursuit of contemporary fieldwork in a (...) so-called postmodern world. (shrink)

Understanding inductive reasoning is a problem that has engaged mankind for thousands of years. This problem is relevant to a wide range of fields and is integral to the philosophy of science. It has been tackled by many great minds ranging from philosophers to scientists to mathematicians, and more recently computer scientists. In this article we argue the case for Solomonoff Induction, a formal inductive framework which combines algorithmic information theory with the Bayesian framework. Although it achieves excellent theoretical results (...) and is based on solid philosophical foundations, the requisite technical knowledge necessary for understanding this framework has caused it to remain largely unknown and unappreciated in the wider scientific community. The main contribution of this article is to convey Solomonoff induction and its related concepts in a generally accessible form with the aim of bridging this current technical gap. In the process we examine the major historical contributions that have led to the formulation of Solomonoff Induction as well as criticisms of Solomonoff and induction in general. In particular we examine how Solomonoff induction addresses many issues that have plagued other inductive systems, such as the black ravens paradox and the confirmation problem, and compare this approach with other recent approaches. (shrink)

In recent decades, a view of identity I call Sortalism has gained popularity. According to this view, if a is identical to b, then there is some sortal S such that a is the same S as b. Sortalism has typically been discussed with respect to the identity of objects. I argue that the motivations for Sortalism about object-identity apply equally well to event-identity. But Sortalism about event-identity poses a serious threat to the view that mental events are token identical (...) to physical events: A particular mental event m is identical with a particular physical event p only if there is a sortal S such that m and p are both Ss. If there is no such sortal, the doctrine of token-identity is not true. I argue here that we have no good reason for thinking that there is any such sortal. (shrink)

We present integral equations for the scattering amplitudes of three scalar particles, using the Faddeev channel decomposition, which can be readily extended to any finite number of particles of any helicity. The solution of these equations, which have been demonstrated to be calculable, provide a nonperturbative way of obtaining relativistic scattering amplitudes for any finite number of particles that are Lorentz invariant, unitary, cluster decomposable and reduce unambiguously in the nonrelativistic limit to the nonrelativistic Faddeev equations. The aim of this (...) program is to develop equations which explicitly depend upon physically observable input variables, and do not require “renormalization” or “dressing” of these parameters to connect them to the boundary states. As a unitary, cluster decomposible, multichannel theory, physical systems whose constituents are confined can be readily described. (shrink)

Our interest in understanding belief stems partly from our being creatures who think. However, the term ‘belief’ is used to refer to many states: from the fully conscious rational state that partly constitutes knowledge to the fanciful states of alarm clocks. Which of the many ‘belief’ states must a theory of belief be answerable to? This is the scope question. I begin my answer with a reply to a recent argument that belief is invariably weak, i.e., that the evidential standards (...) that are required for belief are low. Although one state we refer to using the term ‘belief’ fits this profile, other ‘belief’ states do not. Crucially, when ‘belief’ is heard in a weak sense, it attributes a state that only a rational creature can be in. I will use this observation as a starting point for an argument that the study of (our) belief should not be constrained by the requirement that the illuminated state be held in common with any non-rational being. This lends support to the Transformative Theory of Rationality, according to which rationality does not merely add powers or complexity to the animal mind, but transforms it into a different kind of mind altogether. (shrink)

The transition from form to meaning is not neatly layered: there is no point where form ends and content sets in. Rather, there is an almost continuous process that converts form into meaning. That process cannot always take a straight line. Very often we hit barriers in our mind, due to the inability to understand the exact content of the sentence just heard. The standard division between formula and interpretation (or value) should therefore be given up when talking about the (...) process of understanding. Interestingly, when we do this it turns out that there are 'easy' formulae, those we can understand without further help, and 'difficult' ones, which we cannot. (shrink)

This papers gives a survey of recent results about simulations of one class of modal logics by another class and of the transfer of properties of modal logics under extensions of the underlying modal language. We discuss: the transfer from normal polymodal logics to their fusions, the transfer from normal modal logics to their extensions by adding the universal modality, and the transfer from normal monomodal logics to minimal tense extensions. Likewise, we discuss simulations of normal polymodal logics by normal (...) monomodal logics, of nominals and the difference operator by normal operators, of monotonic monomodal logics by normal bimodal logics, of polyadic normal modal logics by polymodal normal modal logics, and of intuitionistic modal logics by normal bimodal logics. (shrink)

The third and fourth books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. Both the specialist and the general reader will be fascinated by the Stoics' analysis (...) of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war. Margaret Graver's elegant and idiomatic translation makes Cicero's work accessible not just to classicists but to anyone interested in ancient philosophy and psychotherapy or in the philosophy of emotion. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources. (shrink)

Mr. Wellman’s highly original contribution to the relatively new field of justification in ethics consists of characterizing the different ways in which ethical statements can be challenged and showing how each sort of challenge can be met by an appropriate response, enabling reasonable men to appropriately discuss or reflect on ethical issues. In developing his unique, systematic, methodology of ethics, Mr. Wellman has, first, rigorously reviewed and refuted the main arguments for the view of the nature of all reasoning as (...) deductive and, second, convincingly presented arguments for the existence of nondeductive evidences in ethics. Mr. Wellman’s broad definition of reasoning and his rejection of the identification of justification with reasoning reveals new dimensions of justification which will have wide implications in other areas of human speculation. (shrink)

It is often claimed that nominalistic programmes to reconstruct mathematics fail, since they will at some point involve the notion of logical consequence which is unavailable to the nominalist. In this paper we use an idea of Goodman and Quine to develop a nominalistically acceptable explication of logical consequence.

The present paper deals with the semantics of locative expressions. Our approach is essentially model-theoretic, using basic geometrical properties of the space-time continuum. We shall demonstrate that locatives consist of two layers: the first layer defines a location and the second a type of movement with respect to that location. The elements defining these layers, called localisersand modalisers, tend to form a unit, which is typically either an adposition or a case marker. It will be seen that this layering is (...) not only semantically but in many languages also morphologically manifest. There are numerous languages in which the morphology is sufficiently transparent with respect to the layering. The consequences of this theory are manifold. For example, we shall show that it explains the contrast between English and Finnish concerning directionals, which is discussed in Fong (1997). In addition, we shall be concerned with the question of orientation of locatives, as discussed in Nam (1995). We propose that nondirectional locatives are oriented to the event, while directional locatives are oriented to certain arguments, called movers. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that in contrast to natural languages, logical languages typically are not compositional. This does not mean that the meaning of expressions cannot be determined at all using some well-defined set of rules. It only means that the meaning of an expression cannot be determined without looking at its form. If one is serious about the compositionality of a logic, the only possibility I see is to define it via abstraction from a variable free language.