Để xem bóng đá và phát sóng video trực tiếp tốc độ cao, Xoilac là trang web lý tưởng. Đặc biệt, Xoilac không có bất cứ quảng cáo nào, vì vậy người xem vẫn thoải mái thưởng thức trận bóng đá mà không lo bị phân tâm vì bất cứ vấn đề gì. Ngoài ra, Xoilac có đội ngũ dày dặn chuyên môn, luôn đưa ra những nhận định chuẩn xác cho từng trận đấu bóng đá. Với đồ hoạ sinh (...) động, âm thanh lôi cuốn và sống động, Xoilac sẽ lưu lại dấu ấn sâu đậm trong tâm trí người xem bóng đá. (shrink)

Overwhelmingly, students desire the opportunity to earn extra credit because they want higher grades, and many professors offer extra credit be­cause they want to motivate students. In this paper, I define the purposes of both grading and extra credit and offer three traditional arguments for making extra credit assignments available. I follow with seven arguments against the use of extra credit that include unnecessary extra work, grade inflation, and ultimately paradox. I finish with an example of (...) a case where extra credit could be justified, although it relies on an important equivocation. Ultimately, I show that extra credit is neither a pedagogically sound nor a conceptually coherent grading practice, and I conclude that extra credit should not be part of the pedagogical toolbox. (shrink)

thought and problem solving in persons lacking natural language altogether would be a decisive challenge, but there is no clear evidence of any abstract thinking capabilities similar to those evinced by the scientists. Pinker cites languageless persons rebuilding broken locks - this is evidence of perhaps visual imagery, but not mentalese (at least not without quite a bit more detail and argument than we are given). Spiders, e.g., build marvelous things, but no inference to spiderese appears to be warranted. (...) There simply is much we don. (shrink)

Poetry is essentially connected with silence and may be thought of in that sense as a sort of resistance against the din of the present or rebellion against the commonplace. Alert for the primal sound that travels across cultures, it attempts to express the inexpressible. For poetry is the interplay of possibilities. In treating possibilities lightly, it encourages human beings to inhabit their world differently.

One of Jerry Fodor’s many seminal contributions to philosophy of mind was his inner sentence theory of belief and desire. To believe that p is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “belief-box” that means that p, and to desire that q is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “desire-box” that means that q. I will distinguish between two accounts of box-inclusion that exhaust the options: liberal and restrictive. I will show that both accounts have the mistaken (...) implication that in certain cases there can be radical but “secret” changes in a subject’s beliefs and desires. I will suggest that the correct moral to draw is that we should instead accept what Eric Schwitzgebel has called a “surface-level” theory of belief and desire. (shrink)

Classical computational modellers of mind urge that the mind is something like a von Neumann computer operating over a system of symbols constituting a language of thought. Such an architecture, they argue, presents us with the best explanation of the compositionality, systematicity and productivity of thought. The language of thought hypothesis is supported by additional independent arguments made popular by Jerry Fodor. Paul Smolensky has developed a connectionist architecture he claims adequately explains compositionality, systematicity and productivity without positing any (...) language of thought, and without positing any operations over a set of symbols. This architecture encodes the information represented in linguistic trees without explicitly representing those trees or their constituents, and indeed without employing any representational vehicles with constituent structure. In a recent article, Fodor (1997; Connectionism and systematicity, Cognition , 62, 109-119) argues that Smolensky's proposal does not work. I defend Smolensky against Fodor's attack, and use this interchange as a vehicle for exploring and criticising the “Language of Thought” hypothesis more generally and the arguments Fodor adduces on its behalf. (shrink)

This discussion paper critically assesses the American Nurses Association’s stated arguments against nurse participation in assisted suicide, as found in its current (2013) position statement. Seven distinct arguments can be gleaned from the American Nurses Association’s statement, based on (1) the American Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics with Interpretive Statements and its injunction against nurses acting with the sole intent to end life, (2) the risks of abuse and misuse of assisted suicide, (3) nursing’s social (...) contract or covenant with society, (4) the contention that nurses must not harm their patients, (5) the sanctity of life, (6) the traditions of nursing, and (7) the fundamental goals of nursing. Each of these arguments is evaluated, and none are found to be convincing. This is crucial because the American Nurses Association’s official stance on nurse participation in assisted suicide can have significant consequences for the well-being of nurses who care for patients in jurisdictions in which assisted suicide is legally available. The American Nurses Association should therefore have a strong and convincing justification for opposing the practice, if it is to take such a position. That it fails to evince such a justification in its official statement on the matter places a burden on the American Nurses Association to more strongly justify its position, or else abandon its stance against nurse participation in assisted suicide. (shrink)

No evidence exists that the accidental origin of life is too improbable to have occurred naturally, but there are numerous attempts to argue so. Dizzying statistics are cited to show that a god had to be responsible. This paper identifies the Argument from Biogenesis, then explains why all these arguments so far fail, and what would actually have to be done to make such an argument succeed. Describes seven general types of error, with examples. Includes a table of (...) forty-seven statistics used by over twenty authors to date. (shrink)

Besides seeing a rabbit or seeing that the rabbit is grayish, do we also sometimes see barely just the particular animal (not as an animal or as anything) or the feature rabbitness or grayness? Such bare, nonverbalizable perception is called "indeterminate perception" (nirvikalpaka pratyakṣa) in Nyāya. Standard Nyāya postulates such pre-predicative bare perception in order to honor the rule that awareness of a qualified entity must be caused by awareness of the qualifier. After connecting this issue with the Western debate (...) concerning the "myth of the given," seven distinct arguments are presented showing that the very notion of such indeterminate perception is epistemically otiose and that the Nyāya theory of perception is better off without it. (shrink)

Philosophers deny a proposal for actions can be deduced from arguments for or against the proposal because they may be incompatible. Nevertheless, people in general, and politicians especially, make decisions and present arguments they believe are convincing. We studied politicians who made decisions in complex situations. They spoke about possible actions, their consequences, the probabilities of these consequences and their evaluations, but rarely indicated why their arguments led to their choice. We hypothesized implicit argumentation rules involved (...) and checked whether they predicted those choices. We found seven implicit informal logic rules involved. We also found a random sample of people made the same choices based on the same arguments, suggesting basic warrants by which people argue about decisions. (shrink)

In Classical Quarterly N.S. ix , 80 ff. Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones published an article on the closing scenes of Seven Against Thebes. In it he directed an assault on the orthodox belief that these scenes are, in whole or in part, not authentic. The movement in favour of authenticity seemed all the stronger when independently, and in the same year, Walter Potscher put forward arguments in Eranos in defence of some parts of the disputed passages.

Does the visual system adapt to number? For more than fifteen years, most have assumed that the answer is an unambiguous “yes”. Against this prevailing orthodoxy, we recently took a critical look at the phenomenon, questioning its existence on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and providing an alternative explanation for extant results (the old news hypothesis). We subsequently received two critical responses. Burr, Anobile, and Arrighi rejected our critiques wholesale, arguing that the evidence for number adaptation remains overwhelming. Durgin (...) questioned our old news hypothesis — preferring instead a theory about density adaptation he has championed for decades — but also highlighted several ways in which our arguments do pose serious challenges for proponents of number adaptation. Here, we reply to both. We first clarify our position regarding number adaptation. Then, we respond to our critics’ concerns, highlighting seven reasons why we remain skeptical about number adaptation. We conclude with some thoughts about where the debate may head from here. (shrink)

Eight structural criteria are developed as part of a dialogical method by testing them against seven examples of arguments from negative consequences. The aim is to provide a method for evaluating the arguments in the examples as fallacious or not. It is shown that any method that can be satisfactorily used to evaluate such examples needs to be based on two techniques. The first is careful application of argumentation underlying shifts from one type of dialog to (...) another schemes. The second is consideration of contextual factors concerning. (shrink)

Data are presented that focus on the nature and development of argumentative reasoning. In particular our study describes how support for or against an issue affects memory for critical parts of an argumentative interaction, judgments of argument goodness, and the content of the reasons given in support of one view versus another. Two other factors were examined: developmental differences in argumentation skill and the conditional nature of supporting one side of an argument across varying contexts. Our results show that (...) even seven year old children can recognize, identify, and use the basic components of an argument to provide evidence for and make judgements about their favored position. Moreover, if position support is held constant across all age groups of students, seven year old children were found to give reasons and explanations that were highly similar in content and principle to college students. The same similarities held across age with respect to biases in memory and judgements of argument goodness. The primary difference between children's and college students' argument behavior lay in the side of an argument the students chose to support. Seven year old children and some eleven yearold children supported positions that impute more value to friendship and social consequences than to the maintenance and advancement of individual rights, as specified in a contract agreement. The similarities and differences across development are discussed with respect to a theory of argumentation that speaks to the importance of understanding the nature of goal conflict and a theory of intentionality in predicting how arguments will be represented and resolved. (shrink)

Despite renewed interest in work, philosophers have largely ignored self-employment. This neglect is surprising, not just because self-employment was central to classic philosophizing about work, but also given that half of the global workforce today, including one in seven workers in OECD countries, are self-employed. We start off by offering a definition of self-employment, one that accounts for its various forms while avoiding misclassifying dependent self-employed workers as independent contractors, and by mapping the barriers to becoming and remaining self-employed (...) (section 2). We then examine five arguments why governments ought to promote self-employment, despite the forgone opportunities to promote employee work instead that this often entails (sections 3-7): the argument from job creation, the argument from job satisfaction, the argument from independence, the argument from occupational freedom, and the argument from subsistence under non-ideal circumstances. Some of these are unconvincing, we argue, but others are not. Although the strength of the latter arguments hangs on various context-dependent conditions, such that they need to be carefully weighed against considerations of efficiency and equality, they nonetheless offer compelling pro tanto reasons to promote, and not just to protect, self-employment. (shrink)

In my ‘Seven Sins of Pseudo-Science’ (Journal for General Philosophy of Science 1993) I argued against Grünbaum that Freud commits all Seven Sins of Pseudo-Science. Yet how does Freud manage to fool many people, including such a sophisticated person as Grünbaum? My answer is that Freud is a sophisticated pseudo-scientist, using all Seven Strategies of the Sophisticated Pseudo-Scientist to keep up appearances, to wit, (1) the Humble Empiricist, (2) the Severe Selfcriticism, (3) the Unbiased Me, (4) (...) the Striking but Irrelevant Example, (5) the Proof Given Elsewhere, (6) the Favorable Compromise, and (7) the Display of Methodological Sophistication. One should note that not all strategies are disreputable in themselves. But all are used very cunningly so as to hide weaknesses in Freud's arguments. To be fair, quite a few of his methodological remarks are sophisticated enough. As Freud combines these sophisticated remarks with an appalling methodology in practice, I call him a sophisticated pseudo-scientist. I do not claim that these rhetorical strategies are specific to him. (shrink)

In 2021, a survey was conducted among doctors and nurses at Landspítali Iceland University Hospital (LIUH) regarding their views on medical assistance in dying (MAID) and the underlying arguments, the inclusion criteria and modality of implementation. Surveys on identically defined study groups in 1995 and 2010 were used for comparison. The survey was sent to 357 doctors and 516 nurses working at LIUH. It included seven questions and several subquestions. Participants’ answers were compared by profession, age group, and (...) specialisation status. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. A total of 135 doctors (38% response rate) and 103 nurses (20% response rate) answered the survey, representing 27% of the study group. A total of 145 (61%) participants were positive about MAID, with the most common argument being patient autonomy. The 95% margin of error for this view was ± 6.2%. Compared to 19% in 2010, support for MAID had tripled in 2021 (p < 0.05). Approximately 18% of participants did not support MAID of any kind, mostly due to arguments regarding preserving life or inconsistencies with the role of health care professionals. Finally, 19% of participants were uncertain of their views towards MAID, mostly due to the high level of complexity of the matter. Compared to previous surveys, a large increase in positive attitudes towards MAID was observed among this study population. The results revealed the reasons for participants’ attitudes; weighing patients’ dignity/autonomy against professionals’ duty to “not to kill”/palliate and showing some differences between professions. (shrink)

This chapter states the contrast between presumptivism about testimonial warrant (often called anti-reductionism) and strict reductionism (associated with Hume) about testimonial warrant. Presumptivism sees an analogy with modest foundationalism about perceptual warrant. Strict reductionism denies this analogy. Two theoretical frameworks for these positions are introduced to better formulate the most popular version of persumptivism, a competence reliabilist account. Seven arguments against presumptivism are then stated and critiqued: (1) The argument from reliability; (2) The argument from reasons; (3) (...) the argument from positive reasons; (4) the argument from negative reasons; (5) the argument from agency; (6) the argument from psychological force; and (7) the argument from gullibility. If presumptivm is false, it is not for any of these arguments. (shrink)

More's Latin reply to Bugenhagen, given here with a facing English translation, is a comparatively brief but intense rebuttal of the principal points of Lutheran teaching concerning scripture ant tradition, faith and works, grace and free will, clerical celibacy, and the sacraments. It presents arguments elaborated at much greater length in More's other polemical works. _Supplication of Souls_ refutes _A Supplication for the Beggars_, an anticlerical pamphlet by Simon Fish which Henry VIII seems to have regarded with some favor. (...) More places his response in the mouths of the souls in purgatory. In the first book, he contemptuously demolished Fish's loose railery with accurate statistics and historical analysis. In the second, he defends the traditional doctrine of purgatory with brief arguments drawn from reason and a detailed analysis of scriptural passages. _Letter against Frith_ answers John Frith's Zwinglian arguments against the physical presence of Christ in the more. Written to an unknown correspondent, it is the briefest and mildest of More's polemical works and anticipates arguments presented moer elaborately in More's _The Answer to a Poisoned Book_. Besides full introductions and commentaries, a glossary, and an index, this volume contains seven appendices giving the works to which More is replying and other thematic, historical, and bibliographical matter closely related to the three works by More. (shrink)

In evolutionary theory, we generally believe that the evolution of life is from simple to complex, from single to diverse, and from lower to higher. Thus, the idea of evolutionary progress appears obvious. However, in contemporary academic circles, some biologists and philosophers challenge this idea. Among them, Gould is the most influential. This paper first describes Gould’s seven arguments against evolutionary progress, i.e., the human arrogance argument, anthropocentric argument, no inner thrust argument, no biological base argument, extreme (...) contingency argument, statistical error argument, and bacteria (other than human beings) ruling the earth argument. Gould’s arguments against evolutionary progress have great influence in contemporary evolutionary theory. Thus, it is necessary to conduct a careful philosophical analysis of each of Gould’s arguments to reveal his philosophical mistakes. This research contends that Gould’s arguments against evolutionary progress are invalid. (shrink)

Given that explicitly realist perspectives are currently quite unfashionable in applied linguistics, we very much welcome your thorough and careful discussion of the various forms they might take. We find the various categories you identify quite persuasive, and we find much to agree with in your characterisation of several of the positions you outline, particularly in the earlier part of the paper. However, we do take issue with aspects of your characterisation of both “social” and “linguistic systems” realism, and with (...) some of the arguments you adduce particularly against the latter and in favour of your seventh way (“linguistic norm circles realism”). Our response, then, concentrates particularly on the challenges arising from these parts of your paper, and addresses: (1) the ways in which we may define language itself, for the purposes of this debate; (2) the distinction between social and linguistic norms; (3) the properties of language; (4) the role of empirical evidence; and (5) the methodological problems we find with the norm circle approach. (shrink)

The article analyses in detail, for the first time amongst the philosophical literature on Pererius, the “magna disceptatio” on the distinction, in every creature, between essence and existence as it arises in his work De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principijs et affectionibus. The Jesuit philosopher criticizes the opinion of the Thomists, whom were defending the distinctio realis between essence and existence. His reasoning strategy presents seven arguments against the distinctio realis and five argued answers to the Thomists’ (...) arguments. The interest of Pererius’ discourse lies, firstly in the application of this centuries-old question on theological issue of transubstantiation which was a thorny problem of Reformation and Counter-Reformation; secondly, in calling into question the relationship between the Thomist’s position and Aquinas’ position about the distinctio realis on the basis of affinity of their posi.. (shrink)

This paper argues that the convention of allocating donated gametes on a ‘first come, first served’ basis should be replaced with an allocation system that takes into account more morally relevant criteria than waiting time. This conclusion was developed using an empirical bioethics methodology, which involved a study of the views of 18 staff members from seven U.K. fertility clinics, and 20 academics, policy-makers, representatives of patient groups, and other relevant professionals, on the allocation of donated sperm and eggs. (...) Against these views, we consider some nuanced ways of including criteria in a points allocation system. We argue that such a system is more ethically robust than ‘first come, first served’, but we acknowledge that our results suggest that a points system will meet with resistance from those working in the field. We conclude that criteria such as a patient's age, potentially damaging substance use, and parental status should be used to allocate points and determine which patients receive treatment and in what order. These and other factors should be applied according to how they bear on considerations like child welfare, patient welfare, and the effectiveness of the proposed treatment. (shrink)

Aristotle gave seven arguments for the law of non-contradiction. The first one is against a special case of dialetheism, the view that only some contradictions are true, and other six arguments are mostly against trivialism, the view that everything and consequently every contraction is true. Aristotle never argued that dialetheism entails trivialism. Unlike Aristotle, Avicenna, in his defense of LNC, not only considers trivialism and argues against it, but also argues that dialetheism entails trivialism. (...) The argument that dialetheism entails trivialism is called explosion. It is usually known that the first argument for explosion is given by the twelfth century logician William of Soissons. In this paper, we will meet Avicenna’s different argument for explosion and then I will demonstrate that this argument is a non-sequitur. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Converging Ways? Conversion and Belonging in Buddhism and ChrisitanityCatherine CornilleConverging Ways? Conversion and Belonging in Buddhism and Chrisitanity. By John D’Arcy May. Sankt Ottilien: EOS Klosterverlag, 2007. 207 pp.In the course of the past seven years, the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies has established itself as a locus of serious dialogue and creative religious reflection. This volume, which emerged out of the sixth conference (in 2005) at (...) the Benedictine Abbey of St. Ottilien in Germany, combines a diversity of contributions on various issues relating to conversion, religious belonging, and multiple religious belonging. At the heart of the volume are two responses (by Christian theologian Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Buddhist theologian José Cabezón) to the highly publicized conversion of Paul Williams from Tantric Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, followed by a reply by Williams himself. These three articles represent a powerful demonstration of religious apologetics at its best. Each offers their critique of the other from a clearly defined religious position, displaying a clear understanding of the views of the other, but arguing unabashedly for the validity or superiority of their own position or theological convictions. Somewhat missing in the reading is an account of Williams’s conversion story, which he developed in An Unexpected Way. But each of the discussants offers a clear enough account of the other so that even those who have not read the book are able to reconstruct the main points of Williams’s narrative and arguments. Against Williams, who juxtaposes Buddhist atheism with Christian theism, Schmidt-Leukel proposes a conception of the absolute which he believes is amenable to both, but which—as Williams later argues—may be representative of neither. Cabezón, for his part, focuses not only on Williams’s theological arguments, but also on his ethical arguments for the superiority of Christianity, objecting that the black-and-white picture presented in a conversion narrative often entails a distortion or oversimplification of the tradition left behind, and pointing to the importance of interconnection and love in Buddhist texts and traditions. While conceding the latter, Williams, in his retort, passionately and eloquently reiterates his arguments for the plausibility of the Christian conception of God, countering one by one the points raised by his respondents. In this, he draws almost exclusively on Thomas Aquinas, which gives power and focus to his arguments but also seems to ignore the presence of other theological voices within the Christian and Roman Catholic tradition. This exercise in apologetics is interesting, not only because of the contents of the arguments, but also because of the tone. While Williams pays heed to Cabezón, [End Page 161] who approaches his conversion from a clearly defined Buddhist perspective, he seems less respectful of the position of Schmidt-Leukel, who attempts to reconcile Buddhist and Christian views of God. The reasons why such reconciliations are unappealing for someone who has converted from the one religion to the other may be many. But it certainly points to the tensions between clear commitment and belonging to a particular religious and theological tradition and the rhetoric of multiple religious belonging.This brings us to some of the other articles collected in this volume. Some focus on the lived reality of multiple belonging in Korea (Thomas Timpte) or in Sweden (Kajsa Ahlstrand) while others focus on personal experience (Thomas Josef Gotz and Ruben Habito) or on the religious or theological grounds for multiple religious belonging (Jorgen Skov Sorensen and Michael von Bruck). All of these contributions point to the reality or the ideality of belonging to more than one religious tradition. It would appear that in the context of religious diversity, such multiple belonging is all but unavoidable. While some point to the false construction of religious boundaries, others dismiss all notions of religious and theological superiority as well as the centrality of truth in religion. In contrast with this, the robust theological debate on matters of truth and difference at the heart of this volume offers a healthy counterbalance and a welcome reminder of the categorical and at times conflicting claims to truth in religion. If religions are taken seriously, multiple religious identity is less evident than sociological data... (shrink)

Language of thought theories fall primarily into two views. The first view sees the language of thought as an innate language known as mentalese, which is hypothesized to operate at a level below conscious awareness while at the same time operating at a higher level than the neural events in the brain. The second view supposes that the language of thought is not innate. Rather, the language of thought is natural language. So, as an English speaker, my language of (...) thought would be English. -/- My goal is to defend the second view. My methodology will see the project broken down into three major areas. First I will show that human thinking requires a language of thought, after which I will highlight some problems with assuming that this language is innate and hidden. Included in this section will be a small introduction to the compatibility problem. The compatibility problem offers some obvious difficulties for mentalese theories and these will be discussed. The next stage of the project will focus on evidence that can be put forward in support of the claim that natural language is the language of thought. Our most direct source of evidence comes from introspection, and this will play a dominant role in the discussion. The final part of the thesis will involve an examination of the principle arguments that have been put forward against the idea that natural language is the language of thought. My goal will be to show that these arguments do not entail the existence of mentalese, nor do they show that natural language is not the language of thought. I will provide answers to the arguments, and will explain the phenomena they point to in terms of natural language being the language of thought. (shrink)

In this article I examine what I term epistemic arguments against epistocratic dictatorships against the background of Harry Frankfurt’s claim that truth is a fundamental governing notion, and some key reflections of Václav Havel and Leszek Kolakowski. Some of the key epistemic arguments offered by Karl Popper, Robert A. Dahl and Ross Harrison are outlined and endorsed. They underscore the insurmountable problems involved in choosing and maintaining a state of allegedly perfectly wise and efficient rulers. Such (...) rule by virtue of supposed supreme knowledge and expertise denies a truthful recognition of the inevitable fallibility of the state, and of government policies. Moreover, the repression of both citizens’ commitment to truthfulness and their attempts at political falsification will necessarily render dictatorships both continually prone to error and inevitably oppressive. Fallibilistic epistemology is thus seen as a formidable philosophical arsenal for anti-totalitarian and democratic thought, alongside ethical and historical arguments against dictatorship. (shrink)

“Triviality arguments” against functionalism in the philosophy of mind hold that the claim that some complex physical system exhibits a given functional organization is either trivial or has much less content than is usually supposed. I survey several earlier arguments of this kind, and present a new one that overcomes some limitations in the earlier arguments. Resisting triviality arguments is possible, but requires functionalists to revise popular views about the “autonomy” of functional description.

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.

I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this principle – (...) viz. opposition to ‘epistemic consequentialism’ – is briefly discussed. The principle is extended to cover degrees of belief and compared with a couple of other well-known constraints on rational degrees of belief. (shrink)

Moorean arguments are a popular and powerful way to engage highly revisionary philosophical views, such as nihilism about motion, time, truth, consciousness, causation, and various kinds of skepticism (e.g., external world, other minds, inductive, global). They take, as a premise, a highly plausible first-order claim (e.g., cars move, I ate breakfast before lunch, it’s true that some fish have gills) and conclude from it the falsity of the highly revisionary philosophical thesis. Moorean arguments can be used against (...) nihilists in ethics (error theorists), too. Recently, error theorists have recognized Moorean arguments as a powerful challenge and have tried to meet it. They’ve argued that moral Moorean premises seem highly credible to us, but aren’t, by offering various debunking explanations. These explanations all appeal to higher-order evidence—evidence of error in our reasoning. I argue that drawing attention to higher-order evidence is a welcome contribution from error theorists, but that the higher-order evidence actually counts further against error theoretic arguments—including their debunking explanations—and further in favor of Moorean arguments and the commonsense views they support. Along the way I answer a few prominent objections to Moorean arguments: that they are objectionably question-begging, rely on categorizing some facts as “Moorean Facts”, and that reports of one’s credence in a proposition bears no interesting relation to that proposition’s credibility. (shrink)

I provide an argument against the Aristotelian view of universals, according to which universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers. The argument consists in a set of five jointly inconsistent assumptions. As such, the argument can be used to argue in favour of other conclusions, such as that exemplification is no relation or that plausible principles concerning ontological dependence or grounding do not hold.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Intervention into the Flew/Fogelin Debate Kenneth G. Ferguson Under an aggressive title, Robert FogeUn has recently undertaken to reveal "What Hume Actually Said About Miracles."1 He felt this necessary to correct whathe considers a serious misreading ofHume's essay "OfMiracles" (sec. 10 ofthe Enquiries2), a reading which infers that Hume did not argue thatmiracles are impossible a priori (Fogelin, 81). One writer at least regards this reading so common (...) that she has dubbed it the "traditional interpretation" of Hume's account of miracles.3 At any rate, it finds a strong advocate in Anthony Flew,4 against whom the majority ofFogelin's comments are directed. What I find fascinating about this debate is that both Flew and FogeUn appear to be right. On the one hand, Hume does have the textual resources to marshall a fully deductive argument against miracles, at least, once a strict definition of miracles is admitted. On the other hand, while exploiting these resources, Hume somewhat clumsily mingles in vestiges ofa not-fully consistent inductive argument against miracles which he bases on the balancing of probabilities. I will attempt to identify these two skeins ofargument, in the anticipation that this will help to temper the debate between Flew and Fogelin. Hume opens section 10by promisingan argument that will furnish "an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion" (E 110). Moreover, he claims that "there is here a direct and full proof... against the existence of any miracle" (E 115), a quote which Fogelin repeats seven times (toextractits full flavour). C. S. Peirce, wholate inlife took an interest in Hume's argument, conjectured that Hume hoped to provide a general disproof of all miracles that would not require "a minute analysis of each story"; such a procedure was in fact popular amongthe miracle debunkers ofHume's day, forexample, Rev. Thomas Woolston, whose books were extremely popular.5 Hume's boast of "a direct and full proof might be assumed, offhand, to augur an a priori argumentbased on the comparison ofideas; butitmust notbe forgotten that back in the Treatise (for which the essay "Of Miracles" was originally drafted6) Hume defines a "proof" as an argument "deriv'd from the relation of cause and effect."7 There he contrasts "proofs" explicitly with the type of assured knowledge that comes "from the comparison ofideas" (T 124). Still, Hume requires that proofs, despite their empirical origin, must nonetheless be "entirely free from doubt Volume XVII Number 2 105 KENNETH G. FERGUSON and uncertainty" (T 124); proofs, then, must be superior to ordinary causal arguments that are able to offer only a degree of probability (T 124). By his own examples, namely, that "the sun will rise to-morrow" and "all men must dye" (T 124), likewise from the essay "Of Miracles" itself, that "lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air" and that "fire consumes wood" (E 114), Hume makes it clear that "proofs" are simply to be causal arguments uniformly confirmed by a great wealth of past experience: empirical conclusions so sound that any who deny them "wou'd appear ridiculous" (T 124). Taking Hume's definition of "proof" to heart, we might infer that his "direct and full proof against miracles is not then to be an a priori or deductive conclusion, but instead merely a fully convincing induction, along the Unes of"all men must dye." This,would appear to dispel Fogelin's hope to portray the argument as a priori; but the logic ofHume's special proofagainst miracles is somewhat complicated. As Hume's own selection of examples verify, a proof, at least ordinarily, issues in the confirmation of a law of nature. This contrasts with the special proof against miracles where the object is, of course, not to defend a law of nature, but rather to exploit reasoning about the formation of such laws to prove a result regarding the occurrence of miracles. The proof against miracles, consequently, concerns causes, but is not necessarily a causal argument in the ordinary sense. Indeed, it might be properly thought ofas a "meta-causal" argument, if such a term is allowed. And such an argument may potentially have, as Fogelin proposes, an a priori... (shrink)

Presentism, the thesis that only present events and objects exist and that past and future ones do not, maintains a following largely based on the argument that it is intuitively compatible with an everyday perception of time. This intuition is based on the present being the only time that feels it exists, and so is concluded that it is the only time that does. However this paper demonstrates that human time perception does not at all match a presentist account. Variability (...) in the experience of both flow rate and the specious present within subjects‟ conflicts with the view that time has a constant rate of flow and that the present has a constant „size‟. Variability between subjects; such as differences relating to age or circumstance contradict the idea of time as having any metaphysically universal size or rate of flow; constant or variable. It is thus concluded that one‟s perceptions and intuitive responses are not sufficient to support any metaphysical picture of the nature of time. (shrink)

Since the demise of the Sense-Datum independent objects or events to be objects Theory and Phenomenalism in the last cenof perception; however, unlike Direct Retury, Direct Realism in the philosophy of alists, Indirect Realists take this percepperception has enjoyed a resurgence of tion to be indirect by involving a prior popularity.1 Curiously, however, although awareness of some tertium quid between there have been attempts in the literature the mind and external objects or events.3 to refute some of the arguments (...) against Idealists and Phenomenalists agree with Direct Realism, there has been, as of yet, the Indirect Realists. (shrink)

Born to secular Jewish parents and raised in Camden, New Jersey, Andrea Dworkin became a radical second-wave feminist. By Dworkin’s own account, her work is informed by a series of negative personal experiences, including sexual assault at age nine, again by doctors at the Women's House of Detention in New York in 1965, work as a prostitute, and marriage to a battering husband whom she left in 1971. While Dworkin self-identified as a lesbian, since 1974 she lived with a gay (...) male partner, writer John Stoltenberg, whom she married in 1998. Understandably, the main theme of Dworkin's work is male violence against women. This violence is a defining feature of our male-supremacist culture, in which rape, prostitution, and pornography are inevitable expressions of gender norms. Dworkin's writings are primarily aimed at social change rather than intellectualizing. She describes her first book as "a political action where revolution is the goal". What one finds in her writings is not so much philosophical theorizing as calls to action. Thus it is difficult to summarize the abstract theory to which she is committed and from which she draws arguments against the sexism she finds in our culture. What is clear is her desire to eliminate binary concepts of gender and their oppressive effects. In particular, Dworkin urges the destruction of a female gender role that involves masochism, self-hatred, and passivity. She sees male supremacy constructed and reinforced in our culture through the sexist structuring of public institutions and private interactions, locating three crucial foci of male supremacy in action: pornography, sexual intercourse, and rape. These are her central concerns. Her work includes seven monographs, three collections of essays and speeches, a memoir, two novels, and a book of short stories, all of which explore these themes. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, two arguments, one by Chomsky, and one by Bar-Hillel and Shamir, are examined in detail and rejected. Both arguments purport to show that the structure of English precludes its having a finite state grammar which correctly enumerates just the well formed sentences of English. In the latter part of the paper I consider the problem of supporting claims about the structure and properties of a natural language when no grammar for the (...) language has yet been accepted. (shrink)

This is the sequel to my “Fifteen Arguments Against Finite Frequentism” ( Erkenntnis 1997), the second half of a long paper that attacks the two main forms of frequentism about probability. Hypothetical frequentism asserts: The probability of an attribute A in a reference class B is p iff the limit of the relative frequency of A ’s among the B ’s would be p if there were an infinite sequence of B ’s. I offer fifteen arguments (...) class='Hi'>against this analysis. I consider various frequentist responses, which I argue ultimately fail. I end with a positive proposal of my own, ‘hyper-hypothetical frequentism’, which I argue avoids several of the problems with hypothetical frequentism. It identifies probability with relative frequency in a hyperfinite sequence of trials. However, I argue that this account also fails, and that the prospects for frequentism are dim. (shrink)

The last thirty years has witnessed an explosion of scholarly books and articles on Locke which, claims Harpham, has "recast our most basic understanding of Locke as a historical actor and political theorist, the Two Treatises as a document, and liberalism as a coherent tradition of political discourse". The seven articles in this volume attempt to assess this "new scholarship," which is described as revisionist and historicist. This volume is now probably the best introduction to the "new scholarship." The (...) introduction by Edward Harpham, "Locke's Two Treatises in Perspective," and the bibliography provide a nice summary of key ideas, books, and articles. The essence of the new perspective is best stated by Richard Ascraft [[sic]] in "The Politics of Locke's Two Treatises of Government": "Locke's thought is thus both philosophically more conservative and politically more radical than we have hitherto supposed. In short, Locke is at once closer to Aristotle and Hooker and to the levelers and Sidney than the prevailing interpretations of his political thought maintain". Ashcraft attempts to separate Locke from the philosophy of Hobbes on such issues as resistance, toleration, justice and natural law, obligation; he directs his argument against Macpherson and Strauss, whose presences haunt the borders of the new scholarship. Eldon Eisenach, in his "Religion and Locke's Two Treatises of Government," interprets Locke's philosophy as marked by a deep skepticism regarding the reach of natural reason and informed by a "deep faith in the efficacy of biblical revelation" as the source of our moral and political duties. Eisenach comes close to dissenting from the new scholarship by wondering whether "Dunn and Ashcraft" are whistling in the dark concerning the coherence of Locke's "worldview"; but he closes ranks with the assertion that the Essay lays out a path to salvation. Eisenach concludes that Locke is not antireligious and secular, but a defender of biblical Christianity. The new scholarship must emphasize all the more a "spiritualist and assertively evangelical Locke". David Resnick, in "Rationality and the Two Treatises," attempts to recover the portrait of Locke as an antitraditionalist, committed to a critical rationalism. Resnick uses Weber's theory of rationality to render a consistent account of Locke's social analysis. Yet Resnick also insists that Locke's political philosophy is not self-interested and atomistic but is rooted in a fully Christian worldview: "Locke's deeply held theological convictions about the existence, benevolence and rationality of God ground his reasoning in a metaphysically stable framework". This religious assumption provides a basis for Locke's "rationality." But a new inconsistency is opened up by this resolution--a rationalism rooted in religious faith, by a philosopher who continually urged their distinction. Karen Iversen Vaughn, in "The Economic Background to Locke's Two Treatises of Government," attempts to correct the new scholarship's neglect of the economic premises of Locke's political philosophy; this neglect is part of an overreaction to Macpherson, but Vaughn offers a moderate economic interpretation of Locke. Vaughn shows the importance of rational self-interest in economic behavior, the necessity of political society to set conditions for economic pursuit: limit on sovereign power is an example of self-interest and evidence that "economic aspects of man's behavior permeated all aspects of life". Further, "civil society requires enforceable rules to contain the self-seeking actions of all men, so that life, liberty and property can be protected". Vaughn's essay opens the back door to the "self-interested" Locke of the "old scholarship." Ronald Hamowy, in "Cato's Letters, John Locke, and the Republican Paradigm," also seeks to redress the imbalance of the new scholarship, arguing that Locke's philosophy was not displaced by the civic humanist tradition and republican virtue. He offers a detailed analysis of Cato's Letters by John Tenchard and Thomas Gordon. Like Locke, "Cato" defines political authority in terms of inalienable rights. His analysis of liberty is strikingly Lockean, and not republican. Pocock's assessment of Locke's irrelevance to Whiggism and the American founding must be rejected. In the final essay, "Locke's Two Treatises and Contemporary Thought: Freedom, Community and the Liberal Tradition," Stephen L. Newman compares contemporary American libertarian and communitarian alternatives to the liberal welfare state. Newman offers a very trenchant criticism of libertarianism as decidedly non-Lockean by dint of its utter depoliticization of all behavior and its tendency to restore the execution of natural law to the private citizen and private groups. On the other hand, communitarianism fails to provide a sufficiently specific and robust notion of the common good, and more consistent writers like Walzer and Barber fall back not upon a teleological community, but autonomy mixed with participation. Locke's distinction of politics from economics, family, and social groups still provides the most workable and realistic account of politics available in the modern world; hence Newman concludes that libertarianism and communitarianism offer "impoverished" political theories. (shrink)

This article is a defense of frank ramsey's thesis that there is a symmetry between the logical roles of subjects and predicates in subject-Predicate sentences against recent objections.

William Lane Craig has recently formulated a set of arguments that aim to undermine the rationality of Islamic theism. This paper will consider seven arguments that Craig deploys against Muslim belief. The seven arguments can be summarised as follows: (1) the Quran makes an egregious historical error by denying the crucifixion of Jesus; (2) the Quran contains legendary stories about Jesus; (3) the Quran is mistaken about the self-understanding of Jesus; (4) the Quran misunderstands (...) the Trinity; (5) the Islamic concept of God is morally deficient; (6) the Islamic concept of God is less plausible than a Trinitarian concept of God; and (7) the Muslim doctrine of salvation compromises God’s holiness and proves to be unattainable. I contend that Craig’s arguments, when examined closely, do not undermine the rationality of Islamic theism. (shrink)

According to the A-theory of time some instant of time is absolutely present. Many reject the A-theory on the grounds that it is inconsistent with current spacetime physics, which appears to leave no room for absolute presentness. However, some reject the A-theory on purely philosophical grounds. In this article I describe three purely philosophical arguments against the A-theory and show that there are plausible A-theoretic responses to each of them. I conclude that, whatever else is wrong with the (...) A-theory, it is not obviously a philosophically suspect theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 551 Human Embryo Research: Yes or No?. By CIBA FOUNDATION. London: Tavistock: 1987. Pp. xv + 232. $39.95 (cloth). In 1984 a governmental commission formed under the directorship of Dame Mary Warnock studied proposed legislation for experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. It concluded that such experimentation should not be permitted ·after the fourteenth day of gestation. This book records a symposium conducted under the sponsorship (...) of the CIBA foundation, an international scientific and educational organization which promotes research into biomedical and chemical research. The purpose of the symposium was to determine whether the guidelines set forth by the Warnock commission were legitimate and whether new criteria for allowing embryo r.esearch should be established. The book consists of eleven papers presented at a symposium on the ethics of embryo research along with panel discussions about the papers. Technically, embryo research only concerns experimentation with human products of conception after the fourteenth gestational day. The first seven papers describe contemporary embryo research dealing with the diagnosis and mechanisms of infertility, its ti;eatment by in vitro fertilization, the diagnosis of genetic disease, the causes and avoidance of congenital malformations, and the improvement of contraception. The final four papers deal with the issues of the status of the human embryo in d:ffierent world religions, the moral arguments against human embryo research, and public attitudes on human embryo research. The scientific papers are quite detailed, and they provided a good deal of information about the contemporary state of embryo research. But the papers on the ethics of human embryo research are rather partisan, and they do not adequately approach the difficult human and ethical issues involved in embryo research. One gains the impression from this book that the conference was heavily weighted in favor of those who sought virtually unqualified and unrestricted moral and legal permission for human.embryo research. The scientific papers seemed to go out of their way to argue that there was an unbreakable continuum in the process of transmitting life such that it could not be determined when human life began. For example, Professor Teresa Iglesias's suggestion that a new and distinct human life began when the process of fertilization began, and when the newly formed genetic material came to govern the development of the organism, rceeived little acknowledgment. No papers were presented rejecting nontherapeutic research on human embryos, and.the papers presented by J. W. Bowker and by Bernard Williams argued in behalf of the moral licitness of unspecified forms of embryo research. Bowker claimed that there was no consensus to be found 55~ BOOK REVIEWS among the various world religions on the moral status of the human embryo. He surveyed various religions such as Buddhism and concluded that the arguments in favor of the humanity or personhood of the embryo were not strong or persuasive. His point should not be accepted without caution, however, for he did not consider the claims made by western traditions such as Catholicism in behalf of the personhood of the embryo. 'F:or the claims of an oriental religion such as Buddhism are not as persuasive with Western, rationalist, liberal minds as they are with orientals. Bowker argues that religious claims about the personhood of the unborn ';are weak since we do not claim that larvae are full grown fish or that acorns are oak trees. This is true, but on the other hand, we do not say that horse embryos are vegteables or pigs. Implied in Bowker's claim that the embryo is not a human being or a human person is the assumption that at some point in the gestation process the embryo undergoes a "species-transfer" or "class-transfer" from the biological category of non-human or non-personal to human and personal. This is difficult to accept as there is no precedent in other mammals for such a species or class transfer. Equine, bovine, and canine embryos are not considered to be anything than other than of the species of horse, pig, or dog, and there is no reason to believe that they engage in some sort of species transfer. And he does not explain why the human case alone exhibits this... (shrink)

According to finite frequentism, the probability of an attribute A in a finite reference class B is the relative frequency of actual occurrences of A within B. I present fifteen arguments against this position.