The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

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)

We argue that honesty in assertion requires non-empirical knowledge that what one asserts is what one believes. Our argument proceeds from the thought that to assert honestly, one must follow and not merely conform to the norm ‘Assert that p only if you believe that p’. Furthermore, careful consideration of cases shows that the sort of doxastic self-knowledge required for following this norm cannot be acquired on the basis of observation, inference, or any other form of detection of one’s own (...) doxastic states. It is, as we put it, transparent rather than empirical self-knowledge. (shrink)

This book includes detailed critical analysis of a wide variety of versions of the indispensability argument, as well as a novel approach to traditional views about mathematics.

Let X\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{X }$$\end{document} be a set of outcomes, and let I\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{I }$$\end{document} be an infinite indexing set. This paper shows that any separable, permutation-invariant preference order \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document} on XI\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{X }^\mathcal{I }$$\end{document} admits an additive representation. That is: there exists a linearly ordered abelian group R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} (...) \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{R }$$\end{document} and a ‘utility function’ u:X⟶R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$u:\mathcal{X }{{\longrightarrow }}\mathcal{R }$$\end{document} such that, for any x,y∈XI\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}\in \mathcal{X }^\mathcal{I }$$\end{document} which differ in only finitely many coordinates, we have x≽y\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf{x}\succcurlyeq \mathbf{y}$$\end{document} if and only if ∑i∈Iu-u≥0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }} \left[u-u\right]\ge 0$$\end{document}. Importantly, and unlike almost all previous work on additive representations, this result does not require any Archimedean or continuity condition. If \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document} also satisfies a weak continuity condition, then the paper shows that, for anyx,y∈XI\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}\in \mathcal{X }^\mathcal{I }$$\end{document}, we have x≽y\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf{x}\succcurlyeq \mathbf{y}$$\end{document} if and only if ∗∑i∈Iu≥∗∑i∈Iu\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${}^*\!\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }} u\ge {}^*\!\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }}u$$\end{document}. Here, ∗∑i∈Iu\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${}^*\!\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }} u$$\end{document} represents a nonstandard sum, taking values in a linearly ordered abelian group ∗R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${}^*\!\mathcal{R }$$\end{document}, which is an ultrapower extension of R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{R }$$\end{document}. The paper also discusses several applications of these results, including infinite-horizon intertemporal choice, choice under uncertainty, variable-population social choice and games with infinite strategy spaces. (shrink)

In this paper we will study the properties of the least extension n(Λ) of a given intermediate logic Λ by a strong negation. It is shown that the mapping from Λ to n(Λ) is a homomorphism of complete lattices, preserving and reflecting finite model property, frame-completeness, interpolation and decidability. A general characterization of those constructive logics is given which are of the form n(Λ). This summarizes results that can be found already in [13, 14] and [4]. Furthermore, we determine the (...) structure of the lattice of extensions of n(LC). (shrink)

Anscombe famously argues that to act intentionally is to act under a description, and that “it is the agent's knowledge of what he is doing that gives the descriptions under which what is going on is the execution of an intention.” Further, she takes ‘knows’ to mean that the agent can give these descriptions herself. It would seem to follow that animals cannot act intentionally. However, she denies this, insisting that although animals cannot express intentions, they can have them. But (...) how can we speak without equivocation of humans and animals acting intentionally while maintaining that linguistic expressibility is an essential characteristic of only human action? The human capacity for articulation, I argue, transforms animal intention in the following way: Whereas animal intentions are immanent in their behavior, human action is an actualization of the power to make judgments about what is to-be-done; this confers on human intentions a distinctive sort of independence from behavior. (shrink)

Most agree that believing a proposition normally or ideally results in believing that one believes it, at least if one considers the question of whether one believes it. I defend a much stronger thesis. It is impossible to believe without knowledge of one's belief. I argue, roughly, as follows. Believing that p entails that one is able to honestly assert that p. But anyone who is able to honestly assert that p is also able to just say – i.e., authoritatively, (...) yet not on the basis of evidence – that she believes that p. And anyone who is able to just say that she believes that p is able to act in light of the fact that she holds that belief. This ability to act, in turn, constitutes knowledge of the psychological fact. However, without a broader theory of belief to help us make sense of this result, this conclusion will be hard to accept. Why should being in a particular mental state by itself necessitate an awareness of being in that state? I sketch a theory that helps to answer this question: believing is a matter of viewing a proposition as what one ought to believe. I show how this theory explains the thesis that to believe is to know that you believe. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The paper argues that ‘All varieties of gratitude are only overall fitting when targeted towards agents,’ for instance that any variety of gratitude for the beautiful sunset is only overall fitting if a supernatural agent such as God exists. The first premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ For this premise, intuitive judgments are offered. The second premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is the paradigmatic variety of gratitude.’ For this premise, an aspect of the (...) common consent of philosophers about gratitude is noted and the metaphysical basicness of prepositional gratitude is argued for. This gives the intermediate conclusion that ‘The paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ The fourth premise is that ‘If the paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents, then all varieties of gratitude are overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ To supply the conditional of this premise, the Paradigmatic Fittingness Principle is offered, which states that ‘Paradigmatic emotions set the fittingness conditions for their non-paradigmatic varieties.’ This principle is argued for by noting that it vindicates some popular and plausible intuitive judgements and gives an error theory of why one might think that gratitude could be fittingly targeted towards non-agents, and by suggesting the absence of any other plausible source of fittingness conditions for non-paradigmatic emotions. (shrink)

<b> </b>Abstract: It is generally accepted that the most serious threat to the possibility of mental causation is posed by the causal self-sufficiency of physical causal processes. I argue, however, that this feature of the world, which I articulate in principle I call Completeness, in fact poses no genuine threat to mental causation. Some find Completeness threatening to mental causation because they confuse it with a stronger principle, which I call Closure. Others do not simply conflate Completeness and Closure, but (...) hold that Completeness, together with certain plausible assumptions, _entails_ Closure. I refute the most fully worked-out version of such an argument. Finally, some find Completeness all by itself threatening to mental causation. I argue that one will only find Completeness threatening if one operates with a philosophically distorted conception of mental causation. I thereby defend what I call naïve realism about mental causation. (shrink)

This paper offers a partial defence of the Epicurean claim that death is not bad for the one who dies. Unlike Epicurus and his present-day advocates, this defence relies not on a hedonistic or empiricist conception of value but on the concept of ‘existential’ value. Existential value is agent-relative value for which it is constitutive that it can be truly self-ascribed in the first person and present tense. From this definition, it follows that death (post-mortem non-existence), while perhaps bad in (...) some respects, cannot be an existential harm for the one who dies. This paper argues that existential goods are central to any explanation of why life appears good to us from a self-interested perspective, which means that death is not bad in the very respect in which life is most saliently good (from that perspective). A corresponding error theory shows why this truth is easily overlooked and explains why we tend to think that death is significantly worse than it really is. (shrink)

Praktische Vernunft, Handlungstheorien und Moralvorstellungen. Ein Interessantes Werk zum Thema Handeln udn Denken.

In this paper, we consider one of the ways in which shared valuing is normatively significant. More specifically, we analyze the processes that can reliably provide normative grounding for the standing to rebuke others for their failures to treat something as valuable. Yet problems with grounding this normative standing quickly arise, as it is not immediately clear why shared valuing binds group members together in ways that can sustain the collective pursuit of shared ends. Responding to this difficulty is no (...) easy task, since doing so requires demonstrating that the standing to call on one's fellow participants because of shared forms of valuing is not merely a side effect of members authority to call on their fellow participants to do their fair share in a collective endeavor. This is, to the best of our knowledge, a problem that the sparse literature on shared valuing has yet to consider. We argue that the best way to address this difficulty is to consider the real‐world complexity of how forms of valuing come to be shared within well‐structured collectives and how members internalize the evaluative tendencies that sustain shared valuing. To accomplish those ends, we examine two different ways that shared valuing is cultivated within well‐structured groups and the corresponding ways that members internalize forms of valuing; specifically, we examine differences between forms of valuing that are passed downward from the top of a group, as they are in the U.S. Military, and forms of valuing that bubble‐up through local patterns of interaction, as they do among the Zapatistas of Chiapas. (shrink)

Excerpt from De Finibus Bonorum Et Malorum: Libri Quinque About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We (...) do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This paper investigates the following question: when can one reliably infer the existence of an intersection point from a diagram presenting crossing curves or lines? Two cases are considered, one from Euclid's geometry and the other from basic real analysis. I argue for the acceptability of such an inference in the geometric case but against in the analytic case. Though this question is somewhat specific, the investigation is intended to contribute to the more general question of the extent and limits (...) of reliable diagrammatic reasoning in mathematics. (shrink)

Boolos has suggested a plural interpretation of second-order logic for two purposes: to escape Quine’s allegation that second-order logic is set theory in disguise, and to avoid the paradoxes arising if the second-order variables are given a set-theoretic interpretation in second-order set theory. Since the plural interpretation accounts only for monadic second-order logic, Rayo and Yablo suggest an new interpretation for polyadic second-order logic in a Boolosian spirit. The present paper argues that Rayo and Yablo’s interpretation does not achieve the (...) goal. (shrink)

The apparent very close similarity between the learning of the past tense by Adam and the Plunkett and Marchman model is exaggerated by several misleading comparisons--including arbitrary, unexplained changes in how graphs were plotted. The model's development differs from Adam's in three important ways: Children show a U-shaped sequence of development which does not depend on abrupt changes in input; U-shaped development in the simulation occurs only after an abrupt change in training regimen. Children overregularize vowel-change verbs more than no-change (...) verbs; the simulation overregularizes vowel-change verbs less often than no-change verbs. Children, including Adam, overregularize more than they irregularize; the simulation overregularized less than it irregularized. Interestingly, the RM model--widely criticized as being inadequate--does somewhat better, correctly overregularizing vowel-change verbs more often than no-change verbs, and overregularizing more often than it irregularizes. Although Plunkett and Marchman's (1993) state of the art model incorporated hidden layers and back-propagation, used a more realistic phonological coding scheme, and explored a broader range of parameters than Rumelhart and McClelland's model, their results are farther from psychological reality. It is unknown whether any connectionist model can mimic a child's performance without resorting to unrealistic exogenous changes in the training or input, but it is clear that adding a hidden-layer and back-propagation does not ensure a solution. (shrink)

The Golden Rule has received remarkably little philosophical discussion. No book has ever been written on it, and articles devoted to it have been exceedingly few, and usually not very searching. It is usually mentioned, where it is mentioned at all, only in passing, and most of these passing remarks have either been false, trite, or misleading, though some of them, as we shall see, have certainly been interesting enough. Considering its obvious importance and its almost universal acceptance, this dearth (...) of philosophical discussion is unfortunate, and also somewhat surprising. One of the things I hope to show about it, though only incidentally, is that there are problems connected with it of the utmost subtlety, worthy of the attention of even the most minute philosophers. (shrink)

This article shows how, in recent works of cultural analysis, the concept of ‘assemblage’ has been been derived from key sources of theory and put to work to provide a structure-like surrogate to express certain prominent values of a modernist sensibility in the discourse of description and analysis. Assemblage is a sort of anti-structural concept that permits the researcher to speak of emergence, heterogeneity, the decentred and the ephemeral in nonetheless ordered social life. There are other related concepts, like collage, (...) which have been used to give these values substance in research, but currently assemblage is enjoying a popularity perhaps because of the continuing fascination of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. (shrink)

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance. This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed and size. Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed (...) was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size-related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech. (shrink)

It has been a common claim that surrogacy is morally problematic since it involves harm to the child or the surrogate—the harm argument. Due to a growing body of empirical research, the harm argument has seen a decrease in popularity, as there seems to be little evidence of harmful consequences of surrogacy. In this article, two revised versions of the harm argument are developed. It is argued that the two suggested versions of the harm argument survive the current criticism against (...) the standard harm argument. The first version argues that the child is harmed by being separated from the gestational mother. The second version directs attention to the fact that surrogacy involves great incentives to keep the gestational mother’s level of maternal-fetal attachment low, which tend to increase the risk of harm to the child. While neither of the two arguments is conclusive regarding the moral status of surrogacy, both constitute important considerations that are often ignored. (shrink)

Paraconsistent and dialetheist approaches to a theory of truth are faced with a problem: the expressive resources of the logic do not suffice to express that a sentence is just true—i.e., true and not also false—or to express that a sentence is consistent. In his recent book, Spandrels of Truth, Jc Beall proposes a ‘just true’-operator to identify sentences that are true and not also false. Beall suggests seven principles that a ‘just true’-operator must fulfill, and proves that his operator (...) indeed fulfills all of them. He concludes that just true has been expressed in the language. I argue that, while the seven conditions may be necessary for an operator to express just true, they are not jointly sufficient. Specifically, first, I prove that a further plausible desideratum for necessary conditions on ‘just true’ is not fulfilled by Beall's proposal, namely that ‘just true’ ascriptions should themselves be just true, and not also false (or equivalently, that the ‘just true’-operator iterates). Second, I show that Beall's operator does not adequately express just true, but that it merely captures an arbitrary proper subset of the just true sentences. Further, there is no prospect of extending the proposal in order to encompass a more reasonable subset of the just true sentences without presupposing that we have antecedent means to characterize the class of just true sentences. (shrink)

The Duhem-Quine thesis famously holds that a single hypothesis cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed in isolation, but instead only in conjunction with other background hypotheses. This article argues that this has important and underappreciated implications for metaethics. Section 1 argues that if one begins metaethics firmly wedded to a naturalistic worldview—due (e.g.) to methodological/epistemic considerations—then normativity will appear to be reducible to a set of social-psycho-semantic behaviors that I call the ‘normative stance.’ Contra Hume and Bedke (2012), I argue that (...) the normative stance provides semantically-grounded entailments from natural truths to normative truths, reducing the latter to the former. Specifically, the normative stance explains the truth-conditions, truth-values, and truth-makers of normative propositions in terms of socially grounded cognitive-behavioral rules and other natural facts, thus explaining how there can be bona fide normative facts and properties in a wholly naturalistic world. I then show that the normative stance explains the apparent stance-independence and non-naturalness of normative reasons, intrinsic value, and categoricity of moral reasons as ‘user-illusions’ generated by people having strong psycho-social propensities—rooted in evolution and social cooperation—to take these normative stances. Section 2 then argues that while the normative stance may appear to naturalists to successfully explain normativity, it will not appeal to those who come to metaethics with different background commitments. I conclude that naturalists should take the normative stance to be a promising metaethical theory of normativity, and that whether it is a true theory of normativity is something that can only be ascertained by determining which background hypotheses—naturalistic or otherwise—we should have when doing metaethics. (shrink)

There has been much written in recent years about whether a pair of subjects could have visual experiences that represented the colors of objects in their environment in precisely the same way, despite differing significantly in what it was like to undergo them, differing that is, in their qualitative character. The possibility of spectrum inversion has been so much debated1 in large part because of the threat that it would pose to the more general doctrine of Intentionalism, according to which (...) the representational content of an experience fixes what it. (shrink)

Siblings ought to treat one another specially – in other words, siblings qua siblings ought to treat one another in ways that they need not treat others. This paper offers a theory of why this is the case. The paper begins with some intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another and some other normative features of siblinghood. I then review three potential theories of why siblings ought to treat one another specially, adapted from the literature on filial (...) piety: the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and the special goods theory. In each case, these theories fail to explain some of the intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another. The paper then proposes a familial belonging theory. The institution of the family has certain goals, which impose normative demands on family members. I suggest that one such family goal is that every member feel familial belonging towards every other member, a goal which grounds the ways in which siblings ought to treat one another specially. (shrink)

In this article I explore ways to argue about punishment of personal representations in virtual reality. I will defend the idea that such punishing might sometimes be morally required. I offer four different lines of argument: one consequentialistic, one appealing to an idea of appropriateness, one using the notion of organic wholes, and one starting from a supposed inability to determine the limits of the extension of the moral agent. I conclude that all four approaches could, in some cases, justify (...) punishing a virtual reality representation; an avatar. As a consequence of my conclusion, I suggest that our institutionalized criminal justice system must be broadened in scope and punitive measures, in order to cover the new and difficult cases arising in virtual reality. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 35, Issue 8, Page 779-786, October 2021.

The present paper is based on [11], where a number of conjectures are made concerning the structure of the lattice of normal extensions of the tense logicKt. That paper was mainly dealing with splittings of and some sublattices, and this is what I will concentrate on here as well. The main tool in analysing the splittings of will be the splitting theorem of [8]. In [11] it was conjectured that each finite subdirectly irreducible algebra splits the lattice of normal extensions (...) ofK4t andS4t. We will show that this is not the case and that on the contrary only very few and trivial splittings of the mentioned lattices exist. (shrink)

We give an overview of some remarkable connections between symmetric informationally complete measurements and algebraic number theory, in particular, a connection with Hilbert’s 12th problem. The paper is meant to be intelligible to a physicist who has no prior knowledge of either Galois theory or algebraic number theory.

Understanding the individual-level factors associated with sustainable behaviour in the workplace is important to advance corporate ethics and sustainability efforts. In two studies, we simultaneously assess the role of core values and personality traits in relation to a broad set of sustainability actions, both beneficial and harmful. Results from a student sample and then a national sample confirm that values and personality are distinct constructs that incrementally and differentially predict economic, social, and environmental outcomes. We successfully replicate previous findings pertaining (...) to values and find that, controlling for values, the personality dimension of Honesty–Humility is the strongest negative predictor of harmful actions. Our analyses highlight the unique characteristics of values and personality and their distinct implications for ethical and sustainable management practice. By assessing values and personality together, we also contribute to more general efforts within psychology to develop an integrative view of the person. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

The set of minimal indices of a Gödel numbering $\varphi$ is defined as ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi} = \{e: (\forall i < e)[\varphi_i \neq \varphi_e]\}$ . It has been known since 1972 that ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi} \equiv_{\mathrm{T}} \emptyset^{\prime \prime }$ , but beyond this ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ has remained mostly uninvestigated. This paper collects the scarce results on ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ from the literature and adds some new observations including that ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ is autoreducible, but neither regressive nor (1,2)-computable. We also study several variants of (...) ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ that have been defined in the literature like size-minimal indices, shortest descriptions, and minimal indices of decision tables. Some challenging open problems are left for the adventurous reader. (shrink)

All contributions included in the present issue were originally presented at an ‘Author Meets Critics’ session organised by Richard Zach at the Pacific Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in San Diego in the Spring of 2014.

In this thesis I provide a survey over different approaches to second-order logic and its interpretation, and introduce a novel approach. Of special interest are the questions whether second-order logic can count as logic in some proper sense of logic, and what epistemic status it occupies. More specifically, second-order logic is sometimes taken to be mathematical, a mere notational variant of some fragment of set theory. If this is the case, it might be argued that it does not have the (...) "epistemic innocence" which would be needed for, e.g., foundational programmes in mathematics for which second-order logic is sometimes used. I suggest a Deductivist conception of logic, that characterises logical consequence by means of inference rules, and argue that on this conception second-order logic should count as logic in the proper sense. (shrink)