Nelson Goodman claims to have given us a criterion for likeness of meaning that is more stringent than simple coextensiveness and yet that avoids the familiar extentionalist objections. The notion of a nominal compound plays a key role in his account. I show that Goodman's comments concerning this notion are inadequate, that his comments concerning expressions like unicorn-picture are subject to two serious objections: they don't support his claims about likeness of meaning and they make English an unlearnable language.

Participants of round table discussion : James David Barber ; Marilyn Berger ; Creed Black ; Louis Boccardi ; David Broder ; David Burgin ; John Chancellor ; Michael Gartner ; Don Hewitt ; Larry Jinks ; David Laventhol ; Barbara Matusow ; Jack Nelson ; Martin Nolan ; Eugene Patterson ; Ralph Renick ; Van Gordon Sauter ; Tony Schwartz ; John Seigenthaler ; Sander Vanocur ; Judy Woodruff ; Roy Peter Clark ; Don Fry ; Robert (...) Haiman. (shrink)

Neuroimaging offers great potential to clinicians and researchers for a host of mental and physical conditions. The use of imaging has been trumpeted for forensic psychiatric and psychological evaluations to allow greater insight into the relationship between the brain and behavior. The results of imaging certainly can be used to inform clinical diagnoses; however, there continue to be limitations in using neuroimaging for insanity cases due to limited scientific backing for how neuroimaging can inform retrospective evaluations of mental state. In (...) making this case, this paper reviews the history of the insanity defense and explains how the use of neuroimaging is not an effective way of improving the reliability of insanity defense evaluations. (shrink)

At a minimum, military professionals need to have a clear and working knowledge of the ethical decisions that underpin their profession in order to evaluate situations quickly. In the search for such clarity, this volume identifies 14 key virtues of the military professional and through opening commentaries and real world examples of those virtues in practice, it provides guidance for service personnel at every stage of their career.

In this paper, we present a meta-cognitive approach for dropping and reconsidering intentions, wherein concurrent actions and results are allowed, in the framework of the time-sensitive and contradiction-tolerant active logic.

Over and over, philosophers have claimed that environmental holism in general, and Leopold's Land Ethic in particular, ought to be rejected on the basis that it has fascistic implications. I argue that the land Ethic is not tantamount to environmental fascism because Leopold's moral theory accounts for the moral standing of the individual as well as "the land," a holistic ethic better protects and defends the individual in the long-run, and the term "fascism" is misapplied in this case.

Integrins are ubiquitous trans‐membrane adhesion molecules that mediate the interaction of cells with the extracellular matrix (ECM). Integrins link cells to the ECM by interacting with the cell cytoskeleton. In cases such as leukocyte binding, integrins mediate cell‐cell interactions and cell‐ECM interactions. Recent research indicates that integrins also function as signal transduction receptors, triggering a number of intracellular signaling pathways that regulate cell behavior and development. A number of integrins are known to stimulate changes in intracellular calcium levels, resulting in (...) integrin activation. Although changes in intracellular calcium regulate a vast number of cellular functions, this review will discuss the stimulation of calcium signaling by integrins and the role of intracellular calcium in the regulation of integrin‐mediated adhesion. (shrink)

The Great New Wilderness Debate is an expansive, wide-ranging collection that addresses the pivotal environmental issues of the modern era. This eclectic volume on the varied constructions of “wilderness” reveals the recent controversies that surround those conceptions, and the gulf between those who argue for wilderness "preservation" and those who argue for "wise use." J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson have selected thirty-nine essays that provide historical context, range broadly across the issues, and set forth the positions (...) of the debate. Beginning with such well-known authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, the collection moves forward to the contemporary debate and presents seminal works by a number of the most distinguished scholars in environmental history and environmental philosophy. The Great New Wilderness Debate also includes essays by conservation biologists, cultural geographers, environmental activists, and contemporary writers on the environment. (shrink)

A formula is a contingent logical truth when it is true in every model M but, for some model M , false at some world of M . We argue that there are such truths, given the logic of actuality. Our argument turns on defending Tarski’s definition of truth and logical truth, extended so as to apply to modal languages with an actuality operator. We argue that this extension is the philosophically proper account of validity. We counter recent arguments to (...) the contrary presented in Hanson’s ‘Actuality, Necessity, and Logical Truth’ (Philos Stud 130:437–459, 2006 ). (shrink)

Propositional attitude ascribing sentences seem to give rise to failures of substitution. Is this phenomena best accounted for semantically, by constructing a semantics for propositional attitude ascribing sentences that invalidates the Substitution Principle, or pragmatically? In this paper I argue against semantic accounts of such phenomena. I argue that any semantic theory that respects all our apparent substitution failure intuitions will entail that the noun-phrase position outside the scope of the attitude verb is not open to substitution salva veritate, which (...) is counter-intuitive. (shrink)

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the Council (i.e., embryos (...) have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements. (shrink)

The thought that human embryos could command moral respect yet also be acceptably used in medical research has struck some as incoherent. Given some assumptions about why they deserve respect, however, the thought is not objectionable, indeed not even unusual.

With the appearance of Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane came the inauguration of theologians and philosophers questioning the preeminence of scholarly attention given to time to the virtual exclusion of space.

The “received” concept of wilderness as a place apart from and untouched by humans is five-times flawed: it is not universalizable, it is ethnocentric, it is ecologically naive, it separates humans from nature, and its referent is nonexistent. The received view of wilderness leads to dilemmas and unpalatable consequences, including the loss of designated wilderness areas by political and legislative authorities. What is needed is a more flexible notion of wilderness. Suggestions are made for a revised concept of wilderness.

Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century is the first full length, broad-based treatment of this important subject. Written by an international team of practitioners and academics, this book provides interdisciplinary insights into the major issues facing military-medical decision makers and critically examines the tensions and dilemmas inherent in the military and medical professions. In this book the authors explore the practice of battlefield bioethics, medical neutrality and treatment of the wounded, enhancement technologies for war fighters, the potential risks of (...) dual-use biotechnologies, patient rights for active duty personnel, military medical research and military medical ethics education in the 21st Century. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the claim that parallel distributed processing (PDP) networks are autonomous learning systems. A PDP model of a simple distributed associative memory is considered. It is shown that the 'generic' PDP architecture cannot implement the computations required by this memory system without the aid of external control. In other words, the model is not autonomous. Two specific problems are highlighted: (i) simultaneous learning and recall are not permitted to occur as would be required of an autonomous system; (...) (ii) connections between processing units cannot simultaneously represent current and previous network activation as would be required if learning is to occur. Similar problems exist for more sophisticated networks constructed from the generic PDP architecture. We argue that this is because these models are not adequately constrained by the properties of the functional architecture assumed by PDP modelers. It is also argued that without such constraints, PDP researchers cannot claim to have developed an architecture radically different from that proposed by the Classical approach in cognitive science. (shrink)

Karen Bennett has recently argued that the views articulated by Linsky and Zalta (Philos Perspect 8:431–458, 1994) and (Philos Stud 84:283–294, 1996) and Plantinga (The nature of necessity, 1974) are not consistent with the thesis of actualism, according to which everything is actual. We present and critique her arguments. We first investigate the conceptual framework she develops to interpret the target theories. As part of this effort, we question her definition of ‘proxy actualism’. We then discuss her main arguments that (...) the theories carry a commitment to actual entities that do not exist. We end by considering and addressing a worry that might have been the driving force behind Bennett’s claim that Linsky and Zalta’s view is not fully actualistic. (shrink)

I argue that the Formula of Humanity, the principle that we should always treat the humanity of a person as an end in itself and never as a mere means, is a principle of pure practical reason. Insofar as that principle is also the fundamental grounds of morality, it follows, then, that all autonomous rational agents are committed to morality.

In classical quantificational logic, every individual constant is assigned a value from the domain of discourse, thus ensuring that every instance of \\) is valid and so a theorem of a complete logic. Standard tense and modal logics validate a rule of necessitation, according to which, crudely, every theorem is always and necessarily true. Combining these two generates the result that everything always and necessarily exists. In a number of works from the late 1950s through to his death in 1969, (...) Prior worked to develop tense and modal logics that avoided these results. Prior’s key idea was to reject the rule of necessitation. In this essay, I present and criticize Prior’s account of the contingency of existence and offer a more satisfying account that shares many of the virtues of Prior’s account. (shrink)

These essays exhibit explanation and argument regarding some of the possible answers to these fundamental questions in moral philosophy.

It is quite fair to say that to the degree language works is also to the degree language does not work.

This commentary suggests an alternate definition for metacognition, as well as an alternate basis for the relation in representation. These together open the way for an understanding of mindreading that is significantly different from the one advocated by Carruthers.

"For courses in anthropology, cultural geography, environmental philosophy and ethics. Brief text focusing on environmental attitudes and practices of American Indians using the Ojibwa narrative, myths, legends, stories and rituals. Introductory essay offers theory of environmental ethics, an overview of the field of environmental ethics, and places the Ojibwa within this contemporary debate."--Publisher.

"I tried to find out for myself, from the start, when I was a child, what was right and what was wrong-because no one around me could tell me. And now that everything is leaving me I realize I need someone to show me the way and to blame me and praise me, by right not ofp ower but ofa uthority, I need my father." -Albert Camus, The First Man.

What do we do with Judges? This two-edged word? This ambidextrous book? These ambivalent heroes? The Judges were drawing their last fleeting breaths shipwrecked and scattered upon the shores of historical-critical-grammatical-linear-modernist-masculine interpretation. "The narrative is primitive," they said. "The editors have made a mess," they exclaimed. "The conclusion is really an appendix," another said. Then the bible-acrobats jumped in pretending there was no literary carnage while at the same time drawing our eyes away from the literary carnage. "No, no, there (...) is an order to this disorderly book!" "Gideon is a man of faith," they explained. "Gideon is a sham," others retorted. "Long live the king," they cried. "Oh no, the king will bring down the nation," others said. Enter the latest literary critics and the fresh feminist readers to save the day. And save they have. Barry noted the irony. Cheryl called attention to the elaborate, spiraling labyrinth. Phyllis remembered the forgotten. Mieke heralded the incoherence. Deborah the Bee slings Barak with irony. Cowardly Jephthah sacrifices his virgin daughter immediately after he is filled with the spirit. Blind Samson remains stuck in some adolescent, Pinnochio-like stage milling around the same old vices. The Levite, the man of word and sacrifice, lies to the people and dismembers his wife. To beat it all the myopic narrator joins in lock step with the other blind characters stumbling around in the narrative. What manner of text is this? These Judges, these stories, are even more troubling now that we take them seriously. Now what do we do with Judges? The recent scholarship is most promising, but I think we must press forward, or is that backward, or perhaps to another plan. Perhaps Judges hearkens forward to the postmodern. What would Judges look like if we viewed the story through a postmodern lens? Would we see the text in another dimension? Would we let the characters live and breathe as confusing, confounding, intricate characters? Judges speaks to me. These judges, they teach me. How can I ever forget my reading of Judges? For once I found a text reflecting the madness of faith in my maddening world. For once I saw a text like Pablo. I heard the echo of Umberto. I noted the faint murmurings of Jacques. I danced a most joyous jig with Julia. I saw, up ahead, or was that behind me, or over to the side, Martin's flickering candle. Mieke, meet Jael. Barak, meet Barry. Jacques, meet Gideon. Samson, meet Martin. Umberto, meet the narrator or two or three. Pablo, meet the Levite's wife---sorry, she has no name. (shrink)

Aristotelian Actualism is the conjunction of the theses that absolutely everything is actual, that individuals are neither reducible to nor dependent on independently identified properties, and that some individuals are genuine contingent existents. Robert Adams and Gregory Fitch, two prominent proponents of Aristotelian Actualism, have argued that this view has a consequence that any modal logic stronger than M, and so any modal logic in which symmetry and reflexivity are frame conditions, is inadequate. We argue that this is incorrect.