Human music and language are two systems of communication and expression that, while historically considered to overlap, have become increasingly divergent in their approach and study. Music and language almost certainly co-evolved and emerged from the same semiotic field, and this relationship as well as co-origin are actively researched and debated. For the sake of evaluating the semiotic content of zoomusicology, we investigate music from a ‘bottom-up’ biosemiotic functionalist account considering iconic, indexical, and symbolic forms of meaning not in a (...) hierarchy but according to their effects on agents. Such an approach avoids overintellectualizing the representational aspects of music, and instead inverts, as it were, the traditional hierarchy of semiotic categories to produce illocutionary effects. Understanding aesthetics and action not as a priori separate but rather fundamentally co-arising elements of the same events. The focus of musicality again returns to interpretation and how semiosis precipitates expression. (shrink)

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a wide variety of American writers proposed the existence of energies connecting human beings to cosmic processes. From varying points of view--scientific, philosophical, religious, and literary--they suggested that such energies would eventually result in the perfection of individual and collective bodies, assuming that assimilation into larger networks of being meant the expansion of humanity's powers and potentialities--a belief that continues to inform much posthumanist theory today. Universes without Us explores a lesser-known countertradition in (...) American literature. As Matthew A. Taylor's incisive readings reveal, the heterodox cosmologies of Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Charles Chesnutt, and Zora Neale Hurston reject the anthropocentric fantasy that sees the universe as a kind of reservoir of self-realization. For these authors, the world can be made neither "other" nor "mirror." Instead, humans are enmeshed with "alien" processes that are both constitutive and destructive of "us." By envisioning universes no longer our own, these cosmologies picture a form of interconnectedness that denies any human ability to master it. Universes without Us demonstrates how the questions, possibilities, and dangers raised by the posthuman appeared nearly two centuries ago. Taylor finds in these works an untimely engagement with posthumanism, particularly in their imagining of universes in which humans are only one category of heterogeneous thing in a vast array of species, objects, and forces. He shows how posthumanist theory can illuminate American literary texts and how those texts might, in turn, prompt a reassessment of posthumanist theory. By understanding the posthuman as a materialist cosmology rather than a technological innovation, Taylor extends the range of thinkers who can be included in contemporary conversations about the posthuman. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, the mass media have changed the way they cover major political stories, like foreign policy crises. As a consequence, what the public learns about these events has changed. More media outlets cover major events than in the past, including the entertainment-oriented soft news media. When they do cover a political story, soft news outlets focus more on than traditional news media and less on the political or strategic context, or substantive nuances, of policy debates. Many Americans who (...) previously ignored most political news now attend to some information about major political events, like wars, via the soft news media. These changes have important implications for democratic politics. Most importantly, a large number of particularly persuadable potential voters are now tuning in to politics via soft news outlets. This gives politicians an incentive to develop strategies for reaching out to them. Such individuals care less about the nuances of policy and more about the personality of leaders and any sensational human drama that a policy, like a war, entails. Soft news consumers care less about geopolitics than about body bags. Politicians who want their votes are therefore likely to emphasize body bags more than geopolitics. In short, the media environment changes both the style and substance of politics in democracies. (shrink)

This paper examines the popular philosophical theory of moral relativism. Traditionally, the theory argues that communities have their own conceptual frameworks of morality that are inaccessible to those outside of the community. Thus, one community cannot give another community a moral reason to change a practice. In this paper, I will examine David Velleman’s version of the theory presented in his book Foundations for Moral Relativism. This version posits that the drive towards mutual interpretability is a universal drive among human (...) communities. From this drive stem all the practices and moral values of communities. However, Velleman does not believe that this implies that communities can understand each others’ conceptual frameworks. In this way, his account remains a normal version of moral relativism. I will argue that there are some cases in which a person can understand a different community’s conceptual framework enough to provide a reason for that community to change a practice. Importantly, my argument will not say that the reasons for change are moral reasons. They will be practical reasons based on the normative fact that human communities should strive towards mutual interpretability. Thus, my account will also maintain the crucial tenets of moral relativism. If accomplished, this argument will add a great power to the theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we report the development of a scale measuring Christian ethical beliefs. Three studies refined the Christian Ethical Beliefs Scale from 63 expert-generated potential items. Studies 1 and 3 sampled undergraduate students at private, Christian colleges, and Study 2 utilized a diverse, online sample. Participants responded to an electronic survey of Likert scale items and demographic questions. Following careful assessment of reliability and validity, we present a 20-item scale divided across five factors: Divine Moral Authority, Privacy of (...) Faith, Moral Individualism, Cognition Essential to Personhood, and Value of all Human Beings. This brief scale offers a new way to measure ethical beliefs in religious or nonreligious populations. (shrink)

The extended Church-Turing thesis posits that any computable function can be calculated efficiently by a probabilistic Turing machine. If this thesis held true, the global effort to build quantum computers might ultimately be unnecessary. The thesis would however be strongly contradicted by a physical device that efficiently performs a task believed to be intractable for classical computers. BosonSampling - the sampling from a distribution of n photons undergoing some linear-optical process - is a recently developed, and experimentally accessible example of (...) such a task [1]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:After Thermopylae: The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars by Paul CartledgeMatthew A. SearsPaul Cartledge. After Thermopylae: The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. xxx + 203 pp. 4 black-and-white maps, 9 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $24.95.This brief book employs the controversial fourth-century Oath of Plataea, inscribed on stone in the Attic deme of Acharnae, as (...) a hook on which to hang a lively and surprisingly thorough treatment of the Persian Wars—and Classical Greek history more generally. Writing for Oxford’s “Emblems of Antiquity” series, Cartledge aims to educate a wide general audience, an audience this book certainly deserves.From the outset, Cartledge wades into the interminable debate concerning which ancient battle, especially those of the Graeco-Persian wars, was most important for subsequent Western history. With Herodotus, many consider the Athenian-dominated Salamis to be the decisive clash, although, as Cartledge rightly reminds the reader, the largely Spartan victory at Plataea was the final triumph of the Greeks over the Persians. Even after Salamis, it was a close-run thing; Plataea ensured that the Persian king would never again send his armies into mainland Greece. Cartledge, though, does not provide a straightforward narrative of the Battle of Plataea nor of the wider struggle between the patriotic Greek poleis and the immense empire of Darius and Xerxes. Rather, he situates the Battle of Plataea and Athens’ commemoration of it on stone within a much broader context of Greek history in order to reveal how the Greeks remembered— and at times vigorously contested—their own past.After a very clear introductory chapter, with a succinct statement of the book’s main themes, chapter 2 provides a close reading of the inscription itself, along with a useful introduction to epigraphy. Cartledge takes the majority opinion concerning the oath’s historicity, namely, that the oath is literally and verbally inauthentic and belongs not to 479, but is rather an emblem of fourth-century Athenian propaganda. Several factors tell against reading the inscription as an accurate reflection of something that was sworn by the Greeks before the battle, including the conspicuous absence of this particular oath from fifth-century literary sources and the peculiar blending of military titles on the stone, such as the Athenian taxiarch with the Spartan enomotarch. In order to provide context for the oath’s inscription and presentation in Acharnae, Cartledge outlines the post-479 Greek world, highlighting Athenian self-presentation in the period after the [End Page 489] King’s Peace and during the Lycurgan era. The stele seems to have been inscribed shortly after Chaeronea, when the need for propaganda extolling the glorious Athenian past had never been greater. The ephebic oath that also appears on the stele, which implies a movement for military reform, reinforces Cartledge’s impression that the politically and militarily precarious situation after 338 was the background for this inscription. The technocrat Lycurgus, who dominated Athens in this period, was a great admirer of Sparta, which might partly explain why the Spartan-led triumph of Plataea, along with the Spartan-inspired institution of the ephebeia, feature prominently on this monument supposedly designed to highlight the past achievements of Athens.Chapter 3 treats the oath as a religious document. Along with some general observations about Greek religious practice, Cartledge focuses on Athena and Ares, the two gods explicitly mentioned in connection with the oath. That Athena should appear is hardly surprising, but Cartledge pauses briefly over the inclusion of Ares, who, despite being a full member of the Olympian pantheon, was rarely invoked directly by the Greeks. In the martial context of this inscription, however, Ares’ presence makes a great deal of sense, especially alongside the warrior goddess Athena. The chapter ends with an interesting discussion of stasis as a consequence of poor religious observance. As Cartledge reminds us, the Athenians, with their sometimes tumultuous political history, most obviously in the wake of the Peloponnesian War, would have been particularly keen to avoid stasis and the religious impiety that leads to it. In our age of skepticism, it... (shrink)

The debate over whether the just war theory begins with a "presumption against violence" has raged among Christian ethicists for more than thirty years. One camp argues that the theory begins with a presumption against violence that can be overridden in exceptional circumstances. The other camp claims that the just war tradition instead begins with a presumption against injustice. A careful analysis of the debate, however, reveals that the term "presumption against violence" has been used in three different ways, and (...) that clarifying these usages can show the common ground in the debate and move it toward a resolution. (shrink)

In his unpublished freewill manuscripts, Ralph Cudworth seeks to complete the project that he begins in The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) by arguing for an account of human liberty that avoids the opposing poles of necessitarianism and indifferency. I argue that Cudworth’s account rests upon a crucial distinction between the will and the power of freewill. Whereas we necessarily will the greater apparent good, freewill is a more fundamental power by which we endeavour to discern the greater (...) good before willing to pursue it. Cudworth thus opposes necessitarianism by arguing for a libertarian account of freewill while nonetheless rejecting the indifferentist claim that we can will contrary to the greater apparent good. (shrink)

Accidents involving large trucks result in significant economic and social costs. As technological solutions have improved, behavioral factors contributing to accidents have risen in importance. The purpose of this research is to investigate how norms, consequences, and personal attitudes influence safety-related ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. The Hunt–Vitell’s theory of ethical decision-making is adapted to test how these factors influence truck drivers’ decisions containing ethical content. Professional truck drivers evaluated decisions presented in two scenarios that included the situation, the decision, (...) and the results. The research found that drivers rely heavily on evaluations of safety norms when forming ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. Further, drivers’ attitudes toward compliance and the effectiveness of safety regulations also influenced decision-making to an extent. Overall, evidence of a refutation of the assumption that a tradeoff exists between operational productivity and safety was discovered. Drivers in this study intended to behave in a certain manner irrespective of time or money pressures. The perceived ethical component of the decision outweighed regulatory and economic consequences under a range of parameters. (shrink)

We consider a quaternionic quantum formalism for the description of quantum states and quantum dynamics. We prove that generalized quantum measurements on physical systems in quaternionic quantum theory can be simulated by usual quantum measurements with positive operator valued measures on complex Hilbert spaces. Furthermore, we prove that quaternionic quantum channels can be simulated by completely positive trace preserving maps on complex matrices. These novel results map all quaternionic quantum processes to algorithms in usual quantum information theory.

In examining Randy Cohen, an ethical advice giver for The New York Times Magazine, this article traces out special concerns of “applied philosophers” including: dissemination of ideas through a media, disparity of public understanding of philosophical (particularly ethical) issues and the contributions to these issues by specific people, and, of course, money. It skips the question of whether or not what Cohen does is philosophy in favor of examining how whatever he does is like the philosophy that philosophers often claim (...) to be doing. Cohen, then, is a doppelganger for philosophers, particularly those working in applied philosophy, that needs to be considered. The way he wades through a big-business format to discuss individual concerns may provide a model (even if it is of what not to do) for philosophers looking to actually affect change with their ethical pronouncements. (shrink)

In the past, Wonder Woman and Superman were depicted as good friends, but as of 2016, in New 52 Wonder Woman comic books, the Amazon princess and the man of steel are in a romantic relationship. The implication seems to be that romantically compatible people cannot be just friends. Thankfully, philosophy can help to debunk this notion and shed some light on the nature of friendship and romance as well. In consuming works of popular culture, people learn what is expected (...) of them in their interpersonal lives: cross‐gender relationships must be romantic, and friendship cannot be as important as romance. The loss of Wonder Woman and Superman as an example of a stable non‐romantic cross‐gender friendship therefore represents not just a change in the treatment of the characters, but a loss of support for the idea that such friendships are possible. (shrink)

Assertion is governed by an epistemic norm requiring knowledge. This idea has been hotly debated in recent years, garnering attention in epistemology, philosophy of language, and linguistics. This chapter presents and extends the main arguments in favor of the knowledge norm, from faulty conjunctions, several conversational patterns, judgments of permission, excuse, and blame, and from showing how. (Paired with a chapter by Peter J. Graham and Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, "Knowledge is Not Our Norm of Assertion.").

Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity (...) to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, we consider three broad questions. 1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? 2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And 3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what? (shrink)

Hope, in its propositional construction "I hope that p," is compatible with a stated chance for the speaker that not-p. On fallibilist construals of knowledge, knowledge is compatible with a chance of being wrong, such that one can know that p even though there is an epistemic chance for one that not-p. But self-ascriptions of propositional hope that p seem to be incompatible, in some sense, with self-ascriptions of knowing whether p. Data from conjoining hope self-ascription with outright assertions, with (...) first- and third-person knowledge ascriptions, and with factive predicates suggest a problem: when combined with a plausible principle on the rationality of hope, they suggest that fallibilism is false. By contrast, the infallibilist about knowledge can straightforwardly explain why knowledge would be incompatible with hope, and can offer a simple and unified explanation of all the linguistic data introduced here. This suggests that fallibilists bear an explanatory burden which has been hitherto overlooked. (shrink)

This book examines a main theme in religious epistemology, namely, the possibility of knowledge of God. Most often philosophers consider the rationality or justification of propositional belief about God, particularly beliefs about the existence and nature of God; and they will assess the conditions under which, if there is a God, such propositional beliefs would be knowledge, particularly in light of counter-evidence or the availability of religious disagreement. This book surveys such familiar areas, then turns toward newer and less-developed terrain: (...) interpersonal epistemology, namely what it is to know another person. It then explores the prospects for understanding what it might take to know God relationally, the contours of which are significant for many theistic traditions. (shrink)

What is it to know someone? Epistemologists rarely take up this question, though recent developments make such inquiry possible and desirable. This paper advances an account of how such interpersonal knowledge goes beyond mere propositional and qualitative knowledge about someone, giving a central place to second-personal treatment. It examines what such knowledge requires, and what makes it distinctive within epistemology as well as socially. It assesses its theoretic value for several issues in moral psychology, epistemic injustice, and philosophy of mind. (...) And it offers an account of the complex content in play if interpersonal knowledge is to be understood in terms of its mental states and their functions. (shrink)

I explicate and defend Kant's analysis of “skepticism” as a single, metaphilosophically unified rational phenomenon (at A756–764/B784–797, for instance). Kant anticipates one of the defining trends of contemporary epistemology's approach to radical philosophical skepticism: the thought that skepticism cannot be directly refuted, by demonstrating its falsity, but must be diagnosed, to show that its premises are unnatural, and consequently fail to be rationally compelling from within our own nonskeptical standpoint. Kant's most ambitious claim here is that he will develop this (...) diagnosis in a unitary fashion, by demonstrating that Cartesian, Humean, Pyrrhonian, and Agrippan skepticism are essentially interrelated as so many means to “the skeptic's” defining philosophical end. This “unity thesis” comes in both weak and strong variations. First, and more weakly, Kant argues that apparently distinct skeptical problematics share certain crucial metaphilosophical assumptions about the nature of reason, and the role of philosophical self-knowledge. More strongly, he also claims that the four problematics just mentioned are related hierarchically, in that the more fundamental skeptical worries constitute the essential dialectical context for the less fundamental ones, such that the more superficial problematics only arise if a logically prior worry is first acceded to. By showing how deeply these two unity theses structure Kant's Critical methodology, I argue that the Kantian view of philosophy as a “doctrine of wisdom” incorporates, and arguably surpasses, a number of key insights found in more recent work. The final result is that the transcendental philosopher may hope to co-opt the attractions of skepticism without making any unnecessary concessions along the way. (shrink)

The generalizability crisis is compounded, or even partially caused, by a lack of specificity in psychological theories. Expanding the use of mechanistic models among psychologists is therefore important, but faces numerous hurdles. A cultural evolutionary approach can help guide and evaluate interventions to improve modeling efforts in psychology, such as developing standards and implementing them at the institutional level.

Encyclopedia entry covering the growing literature on the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (and its rivals), the Knowledge Norm of Action (and pragmatic encroachment), the Knowledge Norm of Belief, and the Knowledge Norm of Disagreement.

Ralph Cudworth’s goal in his manuscript writings on freewill is to argue that our actions are in our own power in a robust sense that entails the ability to do otherwise. Cudworth’s unorthodox views about the nature of desire threaten to undermine this project, however. Cudworth maintains that only desire is able to distinguish good and evil and, consequently, that desire alone motivates our actions. Therefore, since Cudworth holds that desire itself is not in our own power, he appears committed (...) to the conclusion that our actions are not in our own power either. Cudworth’s solution, I argue, is to emphasize our inward responses to desire, which Cudworth does take to be in our own power. I focus in particular on attention: by directing attention differently in response to desire, Cudworth holds that we are able actively to influence the way in which desire motivates our actions. Our actions are in our own power, therefore, only because such inward responses to desire are in our own power. (shrink)

Artificial moral agents raise complex ethical questions both in terms of the potential decisions they may make as well as the inputs that create their cognitive architecture. There are multiple differences between human and artificial cognition which create potential barriers for artificial moral agency, at least as understood anthropocentrically and it is unclear that artificial moral agents should emulate human cognition and decision-making. It is conceptually possible for artificial moral agency to emerge that reflects alternative ethical methodologies without creating ontological (...) challenges or existential crises for human moral agents. (shrink)

Recent epistemology offers an account of what it is to know other persons. Such views hold promise for illuminating several issues in philosophy of religion, and for advancing a distinctive approach to religious epistemology. This paper develops an account of interpersonal knowledge, and clarifies its relation to propositional and qualitative knowledge. I then turn to our knowledge of God and God's knowledge of us, and compare my account of interpersonal knowledge with important work by Eleonore Stump on "Franciscan" knowledge. I (...) examine how interpersonal knowledge may figure in liturgical practice, in diffusing the problem of divine hiddenness, and in motivating a novel understanding of divine love. I also explore the possibility of epistemic injustice arising from dismissal or neglect of our religious testimony to one another, or of divine testimony to humanity, focusing specifically on the import of interpersonal knowledge. (shrink)

Hope is an attitude with a distinctive epistemological dimension: it is incompatible with knowledge. This chapter examines hope as it relates to knowledge but also to probability and inductive considerations. Such epistemic constraints can make hope either impossible, or, when hope remains possible, they affect how one’s epistemic situation can make hope rational rather than irrational. Such issues are especially relevant to when hopefulness may permissibly figure in practical deliberation over a course of action. So I consider cases of second-order (...) inductive reflection on when one should, or should not, be hopeful for an outcome with which one has a long record of experience: in other words, what is the epistemology behind when one should, if ever, stop hoping for outcomes which have failed one many times in the past? (shrink)

What is the relationship between lying, belief, and knowledge? Prominent accounts of lying define it in terms of belief, namely telling someone something one believes to be false, often with the intent to deceive. This paper develops a novel account of lying by deriving evaluative dimensions of responsibility from the knowledge norm of assertion. Lies are best understood as special cases of vicious assertion; lying is the anti-paradigm of proper assertion. This enables an account of lying in terms of knowledge: (...) roughly, lying is telling someone something you know ain't so. (shrink)

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer. He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of (...) being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases of telling lies from cases of telling the truth. (shrink)

Reference guide to Paul Grice and the literature arising from his work, particularly in philosophy of language and mind.

The Knowledge Norm or Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA) has received added support recently from data on prompting assertion (Turri 2010) and from a refinement suggesting that assertions ought to express knowledge (Turri 2011). This paper adds another argument from parenthetical positioning, and then argues that KAA’s unified explanation of some of the earliest data (from Moorean conjunctions) adduced in its favor recommends KAA over its rivals.

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

For many decades, researchers have explored the true potential of human achievement. The expertise field has come a long way since the early works of de Groot (1965) and Chase and Simon (1973). Since then, this inquiry has expanded into the areas of music, science, technology, sport, academia and art. Despite the vast amount of research to date, the capability of study methodologies to truly capture the nature of expertise remains questionable. Some considerations include (i) the individual bias in the (...) retrospective recall of developmental activities, (ii) the ability to develop ecologically valid tasks, and (iii) difficulties capturing the influence of confounding factors on expertise. This article proposes that expertise research in electronic sports (esports) presents an opportunity to overcome some of these considerations. Esports involves individuals or teams of players that compete in video game competitions via human-computer interaction. Advantages of applying the expert performance approach in esports include (i) developmental activities are objectively tracked and automatically logged online, (ii) the constraints of representative tasks correspond with the real-world environment of esports performance, and (iii) expertise has emerged without the influence of guided systematic training environments. Therefore, this article argues that esports research provides an ideal opportunity to further advance research on the development and assessment of human expertise. (shrink)

Some philosophers oppose recent arguments for the Knowledge Norm of Assertion by claiming that assertion, being an act much like any other, will be subject to norms governing acts generally, such as those articulated by Grice for the purpose of successful, cooperative endeavours. But in fact, Grice is a traitor to their cause; or rather, they are his dissenters, not his disciples. Drawing on Grice's unpublished papers, I show that he thought of asserting as a special linguistic act in need (...) of its own norm, and he tied his maxim of Quality to knowledge. I also develop a simple Gricean-inspired argument showing that the Quality maxim is not dependent on the Cooperative Principle. If it is not thus dependent, then the Cooperative Principle cannot be the explanation of, or source of normativity for, the Quality maxim. Thus, leveraging the insights informing the maxim of Quality actually provides the resources for a distinctive positive case that knowledge is the constitutive norm of assertion. (shrink)

John N. Williams (1994) and Matthew Weiner (2005) invoke predictions in order to undermine the normative relevance of knowledge for assertions; in particular, Weiner argues, predictions are important counterexamples to the Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA). I argue here that they are not true counterexamples at all, a point that can be agreed upon even by those who reject KAA.

I argue for two controversial claims about Locke’s account of liberty in Essay 2.21. The first claim is that Locke does not identify liberty with freedom of action. Instead, Locke places further conditions on liberty beyond to the power to perform or forbear an action at will. The second (and closely related) claim is that Locke takes the power to suspend and examine desire to be necessary for liberty—in other words, that possession of the power to suspend and examine desire (...) is one such further condition upon liberty. (shrink)

The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal (...) conception of evidence and the knowledge-first view of evidence. (shrink)

In the covariant Hamiltonian mechanics with action-at-a-distance, we compare the proper time and dynamical time representations of the coordinate space world line using the differential geometry of nongeodesic curves in 3+1 Minkowski spacetime. The covariant generalization of the Serret-Frenet equations for the point particle with interaction are derived using the arc length representation. A set of invariant point particle kinematical properties are derived which are equivalent to the solutions of the equations of motion in coordinate space and which are functions (...) of either the proper time or the dynamical time. Expressions for the quantities are given for the example of the covariant harmonic oscillator and comments are offered regarding the measurability of the dynamical time. (shrink)