This book engages with the writings of W.G. Sebald, mediated by perspectives drawn from curriculum and architecture, to explore the theme of unsettling complacency and confront difficult knowledge around trauma, discrimination and destruction. Moving beyond overly instrumentalist and reductive approaches, the authors combine disciplines in a scholarly fashion to encourage readers to stretch their understandings of currere. The chapters exemplify important, timely and complicated conversations centred on ethical response and responsibility, in order to imagine a more just and aesthetically experienced (...) world. In the analysis of bildung as human formation, the book illuminates the pertinent lessons to be learned from the works of Sebald and provokes further investigations into the questions of memory, grief, and limits of language. Through its juxtaposition of curriculum and architecture, and using the prose of Sebald as a prism, the book revitalizes questions about education and ethics, probes the unsettling of complacency, and enables conversation around difficult knowledge and ethical responsibility, as well as offering hope and resolve. An important intervention in standard approaches to understanding currere, this book provides essential context for scholars and educators with interests in the history of education, curriculum studies, cultural studies, memory studies, narrative research, Sebaldian studies, and educational philosophy. (shrink)

In education, we are concerned with the teaching and learning of subjects, but the word “subject” can refer to the discipline being studied as well as the individual who is studying. In this essay, Teresa Strong-Wilson explores this “double entendre” of curriculum studies through the analogy afforded by German author-in-exile W. G. Sebald's working through of difficult subjects by way of semi-autobiographical writing that takes the form of an “invisible subject”: a preoccupation with an unnamed injustice entangled (...) with his own upbringing. Curriculum theory, as currere, has foregrounded the autobiographical. While the place of autobiography in curriculum studies has often been taken to mean writing, currere is more an allegorical method of study, of intellectual engagement, of learning through reading and writing, and of teaching so as to open spaces for agency. Strong-Wilson suggests that Sebald can provide a strong example for us in curriculum studies of how to ethically bring into being an allegorical, autobiographical practice focused on “invisible” subjects of deep concern. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza el problema de cómo lidiar con situaciones en las que nuestras creencias morales van en contravía de las demandas de un gobierno que cuenta con el decidido apoyo de la mayoría de los miembros de la comunidad política a la cual uno pertenece. Siguiendo las tesis que plantea Jaspers en el Problema de la culpa, se intenta mostrar que si se interpreta el concepto de culpa política propuesto por Jaspers en la línea del filósofo liberal John Locke, (...) se puede arrojar una nueva luz sobre lo que la responsabilidad política significa. Esto también nos permitirá mostrar que las llamadas obligaciones políticas de los ciudadanos se extienden más allá de los requerimientos institucionales, asunto que ha sido el foco de recientes discusiones entre aquellos estudiosos que tratan la cuestión de la legitimidad política desde la perspectiva del contractualismo moderno. Tal extensión consiste básicamente en que los ciudadanos tienen obligaciones políticas relacionadas con la cultura política que constituyen su identidad política. (shrink)

Physiological responses in futsal have not been studied together with temporal information about the players’ stay on the court. The aim of this study was to compare heart rate and blood lactate concentration responses between 1-H and 2-H considering the time of permanency of the players on the court at each substitution in a futsal match. HR was recorded during entire match and [La−] was analyzed after each substitution of seven players. %HRmean and [La−] mean did not differ between 1-H (...) and 2-H. Time in intensity zones of 50–100 %HRmax differed only in 60–70 %HRmax. HR coefficient of variation throughout the match was low and among the four outfield players on the court. Substitutions, time of permanence on the court, ratio between time in- and out-ratio on the court also were similar between 1-H and 2-H. Balancing the number of substitutions, and the In:Outcourt ratio of players in both halves of the match, playing lower time at 1-H, ~8 min for each participation in the match, made it possible to maintain intensity of the match in 2-H similar to the 1H. These results are a good guidance to coaches and for application in future studies. (shrink)

Continuing the earlier research in [1] and [4] we work out a class of interstices in countable arithmetically saturated models of PA in which selective types are realized and a class of interstices in which 2-indiscernible types are realized.

Motivated by the seeming structure of the sciences, metaphysical emergence combines broadly synchronic dependence coupled with some degree of ontological and causal autonomy. Reflecting the diverse, frequently incompatible interpretations of the notions of dependence and autonomy, however, accounts of emergence diverge into a bewildering variety. Here I argue that much of this apparent diversity is superficial. I first argue, by attention to the problem of higher-level causation, that two and only two strategies for addressing this problem accommodate the genuine emergence (...) of special science entities. These strategies in turn suggest two distinct schema for metaphysical emergence---'Weak' and 'Strong' emergence, respectively. Each schema imposes a condition on the powers of entities taken to be emergent: Strong emergence requires that higher-level features have more token powers than their dependence base features, whereas Weak emergence requires that higher-level features have a proper subset of the token powers of their dependence base features. Importantly, the notion of “power” at issue here is metaphysically neutral, primarily reflecting commitment just to the plausible thesis that what causes an entity may bring about are associated with how the entity is---that is, with its features. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline Kant’s philosophy of culture in relation to teleological judgments, chiefly as exposited in the Critique of Judgment, and I show what roles teleological judgment in general and culture in particular play in Kant’s philosophy of moral action. I begin with Kant’s view of nature as organic, i. e., as possessing a systematic purposive unity even with regard to apparently contingent particulars. Nature is organic in at least two senses for Kant. First, it contains organisms, living (...) beings whose parts (organs) stand in a purposive relation to the whole being and its survival. Second, and by extension, Kant holds that nature as a whole may be viewed as having an organic unity, such that the various species of life (and even the arrangements of inorganic matter) are regarded as standing in systematic relations of purposiveness with one another. I argue here that interpreting nature organically is instrumental for the work that judgment performs, according to Kant, in applying the moral law to lived experience through culture. (shrink)

Intuitions about retractions have been used to motivate truth relativism about certain types of claims. Among these figure epistemic modals, knowledge attributions, or personal taste claims. On MacFarlane’s prominent relativist proposal, sentences like “the ice cream might be in the freezer” or “Pocoyo is funny” are only assigned a truth-value relative to contexts of utterance and contexts of assessment. Retractions play a crucial role in the argument for assessment-relativism. A retraction of a past assertion is supposed to be mandatory whenever (...) the asserted sentence is not true at the context of use and the context of assessment. If retractions were not obligatory in these conditions, there would be no normative difference between assessment-relativism and contextualism. The main goal of this paper is to undermine the claim that retractions reveal this normative difference. To this effect, the paper offers a review of three important objections to the obligatoriness of retractions. Taken together, these objections make a strong case against the alleged support that retractions give to assessment-relativism. The objections are moreover supported by recent experimental results that are also discussed. This will satisfy a further goal, which is to undermine the idea that there is a constitutive retraction rule. The paper also discusses two ways to understand what such a rule would be constitutive of, and concludes with a discussion of how to describe what retractions are. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 21-39 [Access article in PDF] Capability and Language in the Novels of Tarjei Vesaas Catherine Wilson I THOUGH RELATIVELY UNKNOWN to English-speaking readers, Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970) is recognized as one of the great Scandinavian novelists and literary innovators of the last century. His oeuvre is substantial, extending to thirty-four volumes published between 1923 and 1966, many of them translated into English and European (...) languages. He was one of four nominees for the 1964 Nobel Prize in literature, and he received a number of other awards and citations in the course of his life. At the same time, his work has failed almost entirely to generate a secondary literature going beyond plot summary, stylistics, and moral approval, and even that literature remains strongly regionalized. 1 Vesaas wrote in nynorsk or "New Norwegian," the minority language of the country created from south-central dialects and distinct from the official, bureaucratic bokmal. He settled permanently on a farm in the remote Telemark district of Norway and assumed no role in European culture as critic or essayist, refusing to discuss his own work in literary or philosophical terms. As a result, analytic and comparative studies have proved difficult to launch.The present essay is intended to provide one such analytical study, addressed specifically to the philosophical themes of ethical resignation, the precariousness of communication, and inwardness. These are familiar themes in twentieth-century literature. In his study of the "literary conquest of the void," R. M. Adams shows how Moravia, Musil, and Beckett amongst others make use of devices of paralysis, immobility, exhaustion, and incomprehension that have their origins in the romantic literature of the nineteenth century, notably in Baudelaire [End Page 21] and Gogol. 2 Literary modernism rejected certain nineteenth-century conventions of plot and character, but did not abandon the fascination of the preceding century with nihilistic themes. Vesaas's work demands to be read in this literary context. The novels, at once semirealistic and highly stylized, deal almost exclusively with rural people and their struggles against the elemental forces of nature. The main characters are often children and adolescents who suffer some degree of helplessness. Simple contrasts are posed: warmth and cold; loss and retrieval, childbirth and death. Agricultural cycle motifs abound. The choice of protagonists and the dominance of vitalistic and biological themes pose the threat of sentimentality and preciousness, but it is avoided by the ubiquity of devastation and destruction in the moral landscape. According to Randi Brox's note in the Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature, the early novels in particular "advocate as the highest goal in life an accepting, contented attitude toward the human condition." 3This judgment reflects what might be termed a judicial-theological picture of fiction. On this view, a novel constitutes a testing ground for discovering what sort of world we live in and what pursuits are possible and worthwhile. Various alternatives are set up as hypotheses, and novels prove and disprove them through narrative demonstrations of the causal effects of adopting them. False theories of the human world and untenable values are subject to refutation. This template is surprisingly useful, not only with respect to the nineteenth-century novel, with its apparent tendency to confident judgment, but even to modern fiction. Moravia, for example, can be seen to be awarding divergent roles to characters and allowing the qualities they represent to struggle for supremacy. 4Yet poststructuralist and postmodernist criticism have cast doubt on the notion that, to the extent that they are important, such contests can ever be decided, and it is increasingly clear that the greatest nineteenth-century novelists, Hardy and Eliot, did not regard the hierarchy of values as settled and demonstrable. Persons, we are coming to understand, are more plausibly seen as sites of conflict; thus fictional representations of persons are repositories of opposing values. Vesaas's novels reflect such an understanding of persons and values, and so the judicial-theological template is inapplicable.The critical view that Vesaas's novels are essentially instructions in adaptation is untenable, because the goal of... (shrink)

Several current debates in the epistemology of testimony are implicitly motivated by concerns about the reliability of rules for changing one’s beliefs in light of others’ claims. Call such rules testimonial norms (tns). To date, epistemologists have neither (i) characterized those features of communities that influence the reliability of tns, nor (ii) evaluated the reliability of tns as those features vary. These are the aims of this paper. I focus on scientific communities, where the transmission of highly specialized information is (...) both ubiquitous and critically important. Employing a formal model of scientific inquiry, I argue that miscommunication and the “communicative structure” of science strongly influence the reliability of tns, where reliability is made precise in three ways. (shrink)

Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to (...) these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will. (shrink)

The present work addresses the aesthetic philosophy of Eduard Hanslick in order to demarcate it as an epistemological approach to music and a paradigmatic case for musical autonomy. The epistemological assumptions that guided the work On the Musically Beautiful and its most likely influences were analyzed. We conclude by presenting musical idea as an epistemological formulation strongly influenced by positivism and as a qualifying principle of autonomous musical perception. We add to this conclusion a disambiguation with Kant›s concept of aesthetic (...) idea. (shrink)

El objetivo principal del artículo consiste en analizar las implicancias de la categoría “Estado total” en el pensamiento de Carl Schmitt. La hipótesis de lectura esgrimida sostiene que dicho término pone de manifiesto que el propio concepto de lo político implica un grado de despolitización de la sociedad que afirma al Estado y a su capacidad de neutralizar los conflictos de la unidad política. En este sentido, en el trabajo se muestra que la totalización schmittiana no puede ser entendida de (...) forma unívoca ―ni asociada rápidamente al totalitarismo― por lo que resulta crucial dar cuenta del trasfondo histórico de sus distintas obras a partir de la utilización del método exegético-hermenéutico. Finalmente, como conclusión, se indica el uso dual por parte del autor del concepto Estado total poniéndose de manifiesto la diferencia entre un tipo de totalización positiva a manos de un Estado fuerte y un tipo de totalización perniciosa a cargo de las organizaciones sociales.AbstractThe article analyzes the concept of “Total State” in the Schmittian thought. The hypothesis is that this category should relate to the conceptualization of the author on politics. The own concept of the political implies a degree of politicization of society that reaffirms the state and its ability to neutralize conflicts of political unity. On the other hand, Schmitt’s notion of the total cannot be understood unambiguously ―nor associated rapidly with totalitarianism― for which it becomes crucial to account for the historical background of his respective works by the utilization of the hermeneutical and exegetical method. Finally the conclusion indicates the difference between a kind of positive totalization at the hands of a strong State and a sort of pernicious totalization at the hands of social organizations. (shrink)

Some claim that the notion of strong emergence as involving ontological or causal novelty makes no sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly emergent features or associated powers 'collapse', one way or another, into the lower-level base features upon which they depend. Here we argue that there are several independently motivated and defensible means of preventing the collapse of strongly emergent features or powers into their lower-level bases, as directed against a conception of strongly emergent features as having fundamentally (...) novel powers. After introducing the project (Section 1), we motivate and present the powers-based account (Section 2); we then canvass the two main versions of the collapse objection, show how these apply to the powers-based account, and problematize certain strategies of response (Section 3); we then present and defend four better strategies of response (Section 4). (shrink)

For more than a century the notion of a pre-established harmony between the mathematical and physical sciences has played an important role not only in the rhetoric of mathematicians and theoretical physicists, but also as a doctrine guiding much of their research. Strongly mathematized branches of physics, such as the vortex theory of atoms popular in Victorian Britain, were not unknown in the nineteenth century, but it was only in the environment of fin-de-siècle Germany that the idea of a pre-established (...) harmony really took off and became part of the mathematicians’ ideology. Important historical figures were in this respect David Hilbert, Hermann Minkowski and, somewhat later, Albert Einstein. Roughly similar ideas can be found also among British theorists, among whom Arthur Eddington, Arthur Milne, and Paul Dirac are singled out. Although largely limited to the period 1870–1940, the paper also considers Max Tegmark’s recent hypothesis of the universe being a one-to-one reflection of mathematical structures. (shrink)

Transhumance is a form of extensive livestock production that involves seasonal movements among ecological zones or landscape types. Rangeland-based transhumance constitutes an important social and economic relationship to nature in many regions of the world, including across the Western US. However, social and ecological drivers of change are reshaping transhumant practices, and managers must adapt to increased demands for public rangeland use. Specifically, concerns for wildlife conservation have led to reduced access to seasonal public lands grazing for western US livestock (...) producers. To understand how managers adapt to loss of grazing areas (called “seasonal ranges”) we create agroecological calendars from manager records spanning 35 years (1986–2021) at the US Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho and Montana, US. The calendars illustrate how a loss of winter and summer ranges after 2013 coincided with shifts in the operation’s adaptive strategies, leading to more grazing of fall crop residue and purchased winter feed, and reducing flexibility to move livestock to cope with variable forage conditions. These changes shifted the job duties and experiences of farm workers and managers, and raised several new questions related to sheep production and vegetation management outcomes that merit future research. Transhumant system transformation has implications for human relationships with nature, rural communities, sheep genetics, production, and vegetation communities. For livestock operations that rely on government-managed lands to sustain transhumant traditions, innovative forms of collaboration and social adaptation that help secure access to seasonal ranges will be as important as technological innovations to address biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and food system sustainability issues that are reshaping access to grazing lands. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the case that has been made for origin essentialism and find it wanting. I focus on the arguments of Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes. Like most origin essentialists, Salmon and Forbes have been concerned to respect the intuition that slight variation in the origin of an artifact or organism is possible. But, I argue, both of their arguments fail to respect this intuition. Salmon's argument depends on a sufficiency principle for cross-world identity, which should be (...) rejected, if - as Salmon concedes - a given artifact might have been originally made from slightly different material. Similarly, Forbes's argument succeeds only if essentially the same argument can be used to establish a claim that - by his own admission - is too strong, namely that no variation, however slight, in an organism's origin is possible. (shrink)

We prove the model completeness of expansions of the reals by restricted elliptic and abelian functions. We make use of an auxiliary structure admitting quantifier elimination, where the basic relations are strongly definable in the original structure.

I argue that an adequate account of non-reductive realization must guarantee satisfaction of a certain condition on the token causal powers associated with (instances of) realized and realizing entities---namely, what I call the 'Subset Condition on Causal Powers' (first introduced in Wilson 1999). In terms of states, the condition requires that the token powers had by a realized state on a given occasion be a proper subset of the token powers had by the state that realizes it on that (...) occasion. Accounts of non-reductive realization conforming to this condition are implementing what I call 'the powers-based subset strategy'. I focus on the crucial case involving mental and brain states; the results may be generalized, as appropriate. I first situate and motivate the strategy by attention to the problem of mental causation; I make the case, in schematic terms, that implementation of the strategy makes room (contra Kim 1989, 1993, 1998, and elsewhere) for mental states to be ontologically and causally autonomous from their realizing physical states, without inducing problematic causal overdetermination, and compatible with both Physicalism and Non-reduction; and I show that several contemporary accounts of non-reductive realization (in terms of functional realization, parthood, and the determinable/determinate relation) are plausibly seen as implementing the strategy. As I also show, implementation of the powers-based strategy does not require endorsement of any particular accounts of either properties or causation---indeed, a categoricalist contingentist Humean can implement the strategy. The schematic location of the strategy in the space of available responses to the problem of mental (more generally, higher-level) causation, as well as the fact that the schema may be metaphysically instantiated, strongly suggests that the strategy is, appropriately generalized and instantiated, sufficient and moreover necessary for non-reductive realization. I go on to defend the sufficiency and necessity claims against a variety of objections, considering, along the way, how the powers-based subset strategy fares against competing accounts of purportedly non-reductive realization in terms of supervenience, token identity, and constitution. (shrink)

How can we disagree with a bald-faced liar? Can we actively disagree if it is common ground that the speaker has no intent to deceive? And why do we disapprove of bald-faced liars so strongly? Bald-faced lies pose problems for accounts of lying and of assertion. Recent proposals try to defuse those problems by arguing that bald-faced lies are not really assertions, but rather performances of fiction-like scripts, or different types of language games. In this paper, I raise two objections (...) to the fictionalist view, and then offer an analysis of how we disagree with bald-faced liars. I conclude that bald-faced lies are assertions, and that in pronouncing a bald-faced lie, the speaker tries to make it common ground that the assertion was in good standing qua assertion. (shrink)

En este artículo explico el problema de la circularidad, tradicionalmente achacado a la metafísica cartesiana, destacando la importancia que, según Descartes, reviste esta cuestión. Argumento que las versiones del cartesianismo que ofrecen algunos de los comentarios más populares, utilizados en lengua castellana (los de Margaret Wilson y John Cottingham), resultan incompatibles con las posiciones que Descartes mantiene en una serie de textos. Teorías de ese corte sólo podrían justificarse por su valor filosófico intrínseco, pero también sostengo que ambas reconstrucciones (...) presentan debilidades conceptuales que las llevan al fracaso, sea como pretendida solución, en el caso de Wilson; o bien como intento por desplazar o disolver el problema central, en el caso de Cottingham. The problem of logical circularity, which traditionally has been blamed on Cartesian metaphysics, was clearly seen by Descartes himself, who moreover advertised its avoidance (or its solution) as a crucial merit of his own philosophy. On this subject two of the most popular commentaries on Descartes -those of Margaret Wilson and John Cottingham, which are widely used in teaching at least in Spanish- are criticized. Some of the objections I set here against both readings are textual in nature, while other ones hinge, as I argue, on their respective conceptual weaknesses. Wilson's proposed solution is shown to the botched, while Cottingham is shown to fail in his attempt to dissolve the problem. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the modal logic with both $$\Box $$ and $$\Diamond $$ arising from Kripke models with a crisp accessibility and whose propositions are valued over the standard Gödel algebra $$[0,1]_G$$. We provide an axiomatic system extending the one from Caicedo and Rodriguez (J Logic Comput 25(1):37–55, 2015) for models with a valued accessibility with Dunn axiom from positive modal logics, and show it is strongly complete with respect to the intended semantics. The axiomatizations of the most (...) usual frame restrictions are given too. We also prove that in the studied logic it is not possible to get $$\Diamond $$ as an abbreviation of $$\Box $$, nor vice-versa, showing that indeed the axiomatic system we present does not coincide with any of the mono-modal fragments previously axiomatized in the literature. (shrink)

An economic crisis is an unexpected phenomenon with strong consequences for nations, institutions and people's wealth, habits, and behaviors. It departs from the ‘normal’ evolution of the affairs foreseen by economic theory. It makes the claim for new theoretical explanations. It surprises the economic agents that try to ascertain what kind of phenomenon they are facing in order to decide the appropriate actions to undertake. It calls for revisions of theory, plans and expectations. Overall, a crisis calls for an (...) explanation which clarifies its causes. (shrink)

We know that our gas-guzzling cars are warming the planet, the pesticides and fertilizers from farms are turning rivers toxic, and the earth has run out of space for the mountains of unrecycled waste our daily consumption has left in its wake. We’ve heard copious accounts of our impact—as humans, as a society—on the natural world. But this is not a one-sided relationship. Lost in these dire and scolding accounts has been the impact on us and our well-being. You sense (...) it while walking on a sandy beach, or in a wild, woody forest, or when you catch sight of wildlife, or even while gardening in your backyard. Could it be that the natural environment is an essential part of our happiness? Yes, says Eric Lambin emphatically in _An Ecology of Happiness_. Using a very different strategy in addressing environmental concerns, he asks us to consider that there may be no better reason to value and protect the health of the planet than for our own personal well-being. In this clever and wide-ranging work, Lambin draws on new scientific evidence in the fields of geography, political ecology, environmental psychology, urban studies, and disease ecology, among others, to answer such questions as: To what extent do we need nature for our well-being? How does environmental degradation affect our happiness? What can be done to protect the environment and increase our well-being at the same time? Drawing on case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, Lambin makes a persuasive case for the strong link between healthy ecosystems and happy humans. Unique in its scope and evenhanded synthesis of research from many fields, _An Ecology of Happiness _offers a compelling human-centered argument that is impossible to overlook when we marvel at murmurations of starlings or seek out the most brilliant fall foliage: nature makes our steps a little lighter and our eyes a little brighter. What better reason to protect an ecosystem or save a species than for our own pleasure? (shrink)

It is usually supposed that the ‘fundamental’ laws of nature must be general, i.e. must essentially begin with a universal quantifier. Other ‘derivative’ laws may not satisfy this requirement but only because they are the logical or mathematical consequences of a set of fundamental laws. As it stands, this requirement is either too strong or trivial. Consider the Newtonian gravitational law: where FG is the impressed gravitational force on x due to y at t, ms is the mass of (...) x, d is the displacement of the center of mass of x from the center of mass of y at t, and G is the universal gravitational constant.. What is the role of the constant “G”? Reflection shows that it is actually a disguised existential quantifier, or, more precisely, a Skolem function replacement for one. Rendering Newtonian mechanics in a parsimonious language, we could drop the “G” and rewrite as The constant “G” could then be defined, if desired, as the unique r satisfying ). Such a theory would have exactly the same deductive consequences as. But has an initial existential quantifier essentially. (shrink)

Chalmers’s two-dimensional argument against materialism (aka the zombie argument) is arguably the most ingenious attempt to ground a view about fundamental reality on epistemic considerations. From the conceivability of a being that is physically identical to a conscious being but that is deprived of phenomenal consciousness (a zombie), the argument draws on the interplay of the primary and the second intensions of the zombie hypothesis to infer the metaphysical possibility of a zombie world, and thus the falsity of physicalism about (...) phenomenality. By means of a detailed reconstruction of the two-dimensional argument, the paper tries to isolate its most central assumption: that the role played by an epistemic scenario (an intentional object) in the verification of the zombie hypothesis is played by a nonintentionally individuated metaphysical world (the zombie world) considered as actual. The paper argues that no non-viciously circular case for this assumption has been made. Thus, the two-dimensional argument is at best inconclusive. (shrink)

Blanchette and Dunbar have claimed that when participants are allowed to draw on their own source analogs in the service of analogical argumentation, retrieval is less constrained by surface similarity than traditional experiments suggest. In two studies, we adapted this production paradigm to control for the potentially distorting effects of analogy fabrication and uneven availability of close and distant sources in memory. Experiment 1 assessed whether participants were reminded of central episodes from popular movies while generating analogies for superficially similar (...) versus superficially dissimilar target situations. In Experiment 2, we modified this procedure to assess the retrieval of autobiographic memories, more familiar to participants than fictional episodes. Both studies revealed a strong effect of surface similarity on the retrieval of participants' own sources, thus suggesting that the superficial bias typically observed in experimental studies—and simulated by most computational models—does not originate in a lack of ecological validity. (shrink)

I problematize Grounding-based formulations of physicalism. More specifically, I argue, first, that motivations for adopting a Grounding-based formulation of physicalism are unsound; second, that a Grounding-based formulation lacks illuminating content, and that attempts to imbue Grounding with content by taking it to be a strict partial order are unuseful and problematic ; third, that conceptions of Grounding as constitutively connected to metaphysical explanation conflate metaphysics and epistemology, are ultimately either circular or self-undermining, and controversially assume that physical dependence is incompatible (...) with explanatory gaps; fourth, that in order to appropriately distinguish physicalism from strong emergentism, a Grounding-based formulation must introduce one and likely two primitives in addition to Grounding; and fifth, that understanding physical dependence in terms of Grounding gives rise to ‘spandrel’ questions, including, e.g., “What Grounds Grounding?”, which arise only due to the overly abstract nature of Grounding. (shrink)

This is a three paper dissertation. ;for paper 1. Quine held that quantifying into modal contexts is illegitimate. It is sometimes thought that if he is right about this, then essentialist claims make no sense. Perhaps as a consequence of this thought together with the current prominence of essentialist views, there have been two good fairly recent attacks on Quine's argument against quantifying into modal contexts: Neale's revival of Smullyan's points and Kaplan's paper "Opacity". I first argue that Quine's view (...) is not refuted by Neale or Kaplan. I next explain that nonetheless, essentialists need not surrender in the face of Quine's injunction against quantifying in. Quine's work does not rule out the intelligibility of essentialist theses; it does however issue a challenge to explain the mysterious notion of metaphysical necessity. ;Abstract for paper 2. I examine the case that has been made for origin essentialism and find it wanting. I focus on the arguments of Salmon and Forbes. Like most origin essentialists, they have been concerned to respect the intuition that slight variation in the origin of an artifact or organism is possible. But, I argue, both of their arguments fail to respect this intuition. Salmon's argument depends on a sufficiency principle for crossworld identity, which should be rejected, if---as Salmon concedes---a given artifact might have been originally made from slightly different material. Similarly, Forbes's argument succeeds only if essentially the same argument can be used to establish a claim that---by his own admission---is too strong, namely that no variation, however slight, in an organism's origin is possible. ;Abstract for paper 3. Chisholm's Paradox suggests that origin essentialism is incompatible with the view that some variation in the origin of a given thing is possible. Since the latter view is strongly supported by intuition, origin essentialists have been eager to offer solutions to the paradox. In this paper I look at three allegedly different solutions to the paradox: Forbes's, Salmon's, and Lewis's. I give new criticisms of Forbes's view and offer new defenses of what I call the "Salmon-Lewis solution". (shrink)

Obsessive–compulsive disorder is a debilitating mental health disorder that can easily become a treatment-resistant condition. Although effective therapies exist, only about half of the patients seem to benefit from them when we consider treatment refusal, dropout rates, and residual symptoms. Thus, providing effective augmentation to standard therapies could improve existing treatments. Group compassion-focused interventions have shown promise for reducing depression, anxiety, and avoidance related to various clinical problems, but this approach has never been evaluated for OCD individuals. However, cultivating compassion (...) for self and others seems crucial for OCD patients, given the accumulating research suggesting that fear of guilt, along with isolation and self-criticism, can strongly contribute to the development and maintenance of OCD. The primary aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the acceptability, tolerability, and effectiveness of an 8-week group compassion-focused intervention for reducing OCD symptoms, depression, fear of guilt and self-criticism, and increasing common humanity and compassionate self-reassuring skills in treatment-resistant OCD patients. Using a multiple baseline experimental design, the intervention was evaluated in a sample of OCD patients who had completed at least 6 months of CBT treatment for OCD, but who continued to suffer from significant symptoms. Participants were randomized to different baseline assessment lengths; they then received 8 weekly, 120-min group sessions of compassion-focused therapy for OCD, and then were tested again at post-treatment and at 1 month follow up. Despite the adverse external circumstances, by the end of treatment, all participants demonstrated reliable decreases in OCD symptoms, and these improvements were maintained at 4-week follow-up for seven of eight participants. The intervention was also associated with improvements in fear of guilt, self-criticism, and self-reassurance, but less consistent improvements in depression and common humanity. Participants reported high levels of acceptability of and satisfaction with the intervention. Results suggest that the intervention may be beneficial as either a stand-alone treatment or as an augmentation to other treatments. (shrink)

This paper introduces the special issue on Logic and Philosophy of Religion of the journal Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions (Springer). The issue contains the following articles: Logic and Philosophy of Religion, by Ricardo Sousa Silvestre and Jean-Yvez Béziau; The End of Eternity, by Jamie Carlin Watson; The Vagueness of the Muse—The Logic of Peirce’s Humble Argument for the Reality of God, by Cassiano Terra Rodrigues; Misunderstanding the Talk(s) of the Divine: Theodicy in the Wittgensteinian Tradition, by (...) Ondřej Beran; On the Concept of Theodicy, by Ricardo Sousa Silvestre; The Logical Problem of the Trinity and the Strong Theory of Relative Identity, by Daniel Molto; Thomas Aquinas on Logic, Being, and Power, and Contemporary Problems for Divine Omnipotence, by Errin D. Clark. -/- . (shrink)

This article illustrates the importance of exact repetitions in Japanese conversation while emphasizing the relevance of sociolinguistic analysis. The frequency and functions of exact repetitions in Japanese conversation are different from those in English conversation. English people and Japanese people sometimes understand using frequent exact repetitions differently, suggesting that people culturally use conversational features differently and speech interaction might differ among societies. In addition, no studies have been carried out regarding repetitions in relation to speakers' social characteristics in Japanese conversation, (...) although speakers' characteristics of social background sometimes influences the way people interact with each other in conversation. The results in this article show that speakers' social characteristics, especially their age group, strongly affects the way in which Japanese people use exact repetitions. Speakers' social characteristics need to be carefully considered when analysing Japanese conversation, and in general, more sociolinguistic studies need to be carried out in Japanese speech interaction. (shrink)

Some claim that Non- reductive Physicalism is an unstable position, on grounds that NRP either collapses into reductive physicalism, or expands into emergentism of a robust or ‘strong’ variety. I argue that this claim is unfounded, by attention to the notion of a degree of freedom—roughly, an independent parameter needed to characterize an entity as being in a state functionally relevant to its law-governed properties and behavior. I start by distinguishing three relations that may hold between the degrees of (...) freedom needed to characterize certain special science entities, and those needed to characterize their composing physical entities; these correspond to what I call ‘reductions’, ‘restrictions’, and ‘eliminations’ in degrees of freedom. I then argue that eliminations in degrees of freedom, in particular—when strictly fewer degrees of freedom are required to characterize certain special science entities than are required to characterize their composing physical entities—provide a basis for making sense of how certain special science entities can be both physically acceptable and ontologically irreducible to physical entities. (shrink)

The cut and thrust of this paper is the re-examination of an age long belief and practice among the Ika people of Delta State and the Obolo of Rivers State which is aimed at discouraging the practice of witchcraft and sorcery. The study critically evaluates the phenomenon which includes necromancy, divination and poison ordeal and concludes that caution is needed as the act which involves human life is not without imperfection. The discourse is comparative as it examines the methods of (...) ascertaining death among the Ika and Obolo. It employs moral, social and philosophical springboards for the analysis. Some of the findings includes: belief in witchcraft is very strong among the people and age long practices to eradicate same will endure, if nothing is done to discourage it. A major constraint is that matters relating to witchcraft and sorcery are metaphysical and so difficult to verify.Keywords: Death, Ascertain, Cosmology, Necromancy, Divination and Ordeal by poison. (shrink)

Bringing allegory into the light from the neglect into which it fell means focusing on the wondrous heights of the human spirit in its significance for culture. Contemporary philosophies and literary theories, which give pre-eminence to primary linguistics forms (symbol and metaphor), seem to favor just that which makes intelligible communication possible. But they fall short in accounting for the deepest subliminal founts that prompt the mind to exalt in beauty, virtue, transcending aspiration. The present, rich collection shows how allegory, (...) incorporating the soaring of the spirit, offers highlights for culture, with its fluctuations and transformation. This collective effort, rich in ideas and intuitions and covering a vast range of cultural manifestations, is a pioneering work, retrieving the vision of the exalted human spirit, bringing together literature, theatre, music and painting in a variety of revealing perspectives. The authors include: M. Kronegger, Ch. Raffini, J. Smith, J.B. Williamson, H. Ross, M.F. Wagner, F. Divorne, L. Oppenheim, D.K. Heckerl, N. Campi de Castro, P. Saurez Pascual, M. Alfaro Amieiro, H. Fletcher Thompson, R.J. Wilson III, and A. Stensaas. For specialists, students and workers in philosophy, comparative literature, aesthetic phenomenologists and historians of art. (shrink)

En este artículo se recorren las principales tendencias que la teología ha desarrollado en la reflexión sobre Dios. Sobre todo se presta atención a la crítica de Heidegger a la ontoteología, la cuestión del mal, de la relación con la ciencia, el encuentro con las otras religiones y el desarrollo de la teología trinitaria. El recorrido deja ver las líneas de fuerza y también se plantean algunas cuestiones críticas. This article shows the main tendencies theology has developed about God, paying (...) special attention to Heidegger’s criticism on ontotheology, problem of evil, relation with science, meeting with other religions and development of Trinitarian theology. Strong lines can be seen in this review and critical questions are asked. (shrink)

Healthcare workers are often assumed to have a duty to work, even if faced with personal risk. This is particularly so for professionals. However, the health service also depends on non-professionals, such as porters, cooks and cleaners. The duty to work is currently under scrutiny because of the ongoing challenge of responding to pandemic influenza, where an effective response depends on most uninfected HCWs continuing to work, despite personal risk. This paper reports findings of a survey of HCWs conducted across (...) three National Health Service trusts in the West Midlands, UK, to establish whether HCWs’ likelihood of working during a pandemic is associated with views about the duty to work. The sense that HCWs felt that they had a duty to work despite personal risk emerged strongly regardless of professional status. Besides a strong sense that everyone should pull together, all kinds of HCWs recognised a duty to work even in difficult circumstances, which correlated strongly with their stated likelihood of working. This suggests that HCWs’ decisions about whether or not they are prepared to work during a pandemic are closely linked to their sense of duty. However, respondents’ sense of the duty to work may conflict with their sense of duty to family, as well as other factors such as a perceived lack of reciprocity from their employers. Interestingly, nearly 25% of doctors did not consider that they had a duty to work where doing so would pose risks to themselves or their families. (shrink)

The present paper studies a family of Stoic proofs of the intelligence of the cosmos, i. e. of the thesis that the cosmos is intelligent in the strong sense that it is, as a whole, something that thinks. This family, ‘F2’, goes back to a proof, ‘XP’, found in Philebus 29a9–30 a8 and Xenophon Mem. 1.4.8. F2 infers the intelligence of the cosmos, as XP does, from the general idea that our intelligence proceeds from the cosmos, which is the (...) ultimate cause of why we are intelligent, and the further claim that, since this is so, the cosmos itself must be intelligent. They differ from one another, however, in how they account for. In this paper, I present a new reason for why the accounts are different, that complements those given by David Sedley in a recent and important study of Stoic cosmology. Based on the analogy between intelligence and the four elements, XP puts forward the idea that the intelligence currently present in us is a portion of cosmic intelligence that has separated from it at some point in the past, and that has travelled from the outside cosmos to us. In contrast, the theory used by F2 to explain the generation of human intelligence is grounded not in the notions of separation and locomotion, but in that of transmission of a state. As I argue in some detail, the separation-locomotion model and the transmission model are not only different from each other, but also logically independent from one another: in general terms, neither entails the other. This transmission model used by the Stoics in a proof of the intelligence of the cosmos, I submit, is a major innovation in ancient cosmological and metaphysical thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles Fred Wilson The position is often stated that Hume's discussion of miracles is inconsistent with his views on the logical or ontological status oflaws ofnature and with his more general scepticism. Broad, for one, has so argued.1 Hume's views on induction are assumed to go somethinglike this. Any attempt to demonstrate knowledge ofmatters offact presupposes causal reasoning, but the (...) latter is based not on any perception of necessary connections, but on an unreasoned expectation that because events have been constantly conjoined in the past they will be constantly conjoined in the future. The fact that our past experience gives rise to certain expectations provides absolutely no reason to think that these expectations will be fulfilled. But this is forgotten as soon as he turns to the topic of miracles where the argument requires certain assumptions about laws of nature. Here he claims that the laws of nature arebased upon afirm andunalterable experience and dismisses what he apparently admits to be strong evidence for miracles on the basis of the claim that such events are absolutely impossible. The inconsistency between the discussion of miracles and the earlier discussions of induction and causality is clear. Nonetheless, there is a certain implausibility to this claim that makes it a difficult one to entertain seriously, since it is unlikely that a philosopher as careful as Hume would have failed to recognize the inconsistency if it existed. What I propose here to argue is that there is in fact no inconsistency, and that this becomes clear once one places the discussion ofmiracles in the broader context ofthe overall argument ofthe first Enquiry. In particular, the charge ofinconsistency disappears once one eliminates the caricature ofHume's views on causal reasoning upon which it rests. To come to grips with the discussion of miracles in Hume it is necessary to place that discussion in its historical context. In the generally empiricist atmosphere that developed in Britain following the mid-seventeenth century civil wars, the general defence of the reasonableness of Christianity consisted of two parts. First, it washeldthatrational argument, whether causal or teleological orboth, could yield a reasonable belief that a deity ofa more or less traditional sort existed. Then, second, in order to establish further that Jesus was the Son ofGod it was held that one could rely upon a chain oftestimony Volume XV Number 2 255 FRED WILSON leading back from the present to the past to infer the existence of miracles testifying to the divinity ofJesus. Hume attacks this second inference in the essay on miracles andthe first in the essay that follows in the Enquiries on God's particular providence (the themes of which are developed more fully in the Dialogues on Natural Religion). Given the central place that the appeal to miracles held in Christian apologetics in the 17th and 18th centuries, Hume's systematic attack on the argument from miracles constituted a clear attack on Christianity. To be sure, Hume's argument would never have persuaded JohnWesley, but that would hardly have surprised Hume himself, nor should it surprise us: those in the grips of religious enthusiasm, whether it be John Wesley or Jimmy Swaggart, will hardly be persuaded by rational argument, however much it is still true that they ought to be persuaded by it. The appeal to miracles tojustify specifically Christian beliefs had a long history. One can find it already in the late Roman period in Eusebius. Muslim thinkers were to challenge this traditional defence by arguing that chains oftestimony become more unreliable the longer they become. As for their own Islamic beliefs, these they admitted had also to be justified by an appeal to miracles, but there was, it was claimed, a unique self-justifying miracle in the Koran, the specially revealed Word of God. The critical theme of the Muslim apologists, that the longer a chain of testimony the less assurance it gives of the fact that a miracle had occurred, was developed in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries.6 It seems to have been introduced by the Oxford orientalist Edward Pocock who had discovered this line of Muslim apologetics while... (shrink)

Animal replaceability is supposed to be a feature of some consequentialist theories, like Utilitarianism. Roughly, an animal is replaceable if it is permissible to kill it because the disvalue thereby caused will be compensated by the value of a new animal’s life. This is specially troubling since the conditions for such compensation seem easily attainable by improved forms of raising and killing animals. Thus, grounding a strong moral status of animals in such theories is somewhat compromised. As is, consequently, (...) their position as an alternative to rights-based theories in animal ethics. Recognising this, some utilitarians tried to disassociate utilitarianism and replaceability. I will here add my voice to this project. However, instead of seeing the culprit in the usual suspects (hedonism, maximisation or the total view), I advance a new proposal. After identifying that the compensating value for a disvaluable action has to be its consequence, I present a restriction on consequences: consequences of sequences of actions cannot be consequences of the isolated actions in the sequences. Given this, the main argument is simple: killing an animal is permissible only if the the value of the new animal’s life is a consequence of the killing; but this value is a consequence of a sequence of actions which involves the killing plus some additional actions; therefore, since, via the restriction, such value is not a consequence of the killing, it is irrelevant to its normative status. I then present two further motivations for the restriction: firstly, it prevents the value of conditional actions from trivially influencing the value of the actions on which they are conditional; secondly, it is useful – even if not a complete solution – to reply other objections to consequentialism: the accordion effect of action and the cluelessness problem. I finally consider a couple of objections. (shrink)

Issues concerning naturalism have increasingly become the subject of philosophical reflections involving ontological, epistemological, and even ethics affairs. The most popular topic for contemporary philosophy has been the relationship between ontological results of Darwinism and epistemology. Despite the varied circumstances of its establishment, naturalism almost always produces recommendations that reflect a worldview much “weaker” (as in the case of Habermas) than the strong one more common among scientism. There are good structural reasons for this difference. The aim of this (...) paper is to elucidate some of distinctive social features of Habermas's conception of the human being and its implications in the Theory of Communicative Action (1982). Therefore, it is shown that his anthropology takes a naturalistic and Darwinist perspective in the weak naturalism perspective. In the first part, Darwin ́s legacy is analysed as a research program, and Habermas ́s studies on biological anthropology are compared with the latest research in genetics and palaeontology. In the second part, we will show Habermas's proposal to confront an epistemological dualism through a weak non‐reductionist naturalism as a critique of modern metaphysics, which structures a new pragmatic realism. (shrink)