This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which impose unjust burdens on others, (4) 'burden shifting II’ (allowing some to (...) protect peoples rights in ways which impose otherwise unjustified burdens on the duty bearers, (5) 'compromising moral ideals' (permitting agents to compromise non-justice ideals that they are otherwise bound by); and (6) ‘promoting compliance (implementing policies and creating institutions which reduce noncompliance). It concludes by outlining a methodological framework for evaluating these options, and by setting out my tentative and provisional evaluation of which responses are the least bad. (shrink)

Simon Glendinning explains the mysteries of phenomenology.

Triviality results threaten plausible principles governing our credence in epistemic modal claims. This paper develops a new account of modal credence which avoids triviality. On the resulting theory, probabilities are assigned not to sets of worlds, but rather to sets of information state-world pairs. The theory avoids triviality by giving up the principle that rational credence is closed under conditionalization. A rational agent can become irrational by conditionalizing on new evidence. In place of conditionalization, the paper develops a new account (...) of updating: conditionalization with normalization. (shrink)

In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oyowe argues that Menkiti’s persons are “soft persons.” They are different in kind from human beings in that they find their existence in a social ontology, whereas humans find theirs in a natural ontology, but this does not make them any less real. This understanding, Oyowe contends, is consistent with Menkiti’s texts and allows for a satisfying explanation of a possibly problematic relationship between human being and person. He acknowledges that their placement in social ontology makes (...) them (at least partly) conventional entities and so opens Menkiti’s account to some of the threats that face conventionalism, but he goes on to argue that these can be overcome. This article argues against Oyowe that Menkiti’s persons are resistant to the interpretation as soft entities. Though Menkiti continually stresses the importance of the community to personhood, much of what he has to say suggests he ascribes neither to the distinction between social and natural ontology that is central to Oyowe’s interpretation nor to the conventionalism that comes with it. This article argues that the soft-person reading does not solve problems of conventionalism as neatly as Oyowe hopes but that Menkiti’s view is not vulnerable to those problems. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Metaphysics and its Doubters Analysis and Logic Naturalism and Identity 4 Supervenience Conclusion Time.

This thesis defends egalitarianism about knowledge and belief, on which neither is understood in terms of the other, from what I call the abductive argument. This argument is meant to favour views opposed to egalitarianism: doxasticism, on which knowledge is understood in terms of belief, and epistemicism, on which belief is understood in terms of knowledge. The abductive argument turns on the idea that doxasticism and epistemicism, by contrast with egalitarianism, explain certain data about knowledge and belief. I argue, however, (...) that no versions of doxasticism and epistemicism currently on offer are preferable to egalitarianism on abductive grounds. As part of my argument, I also defend the claim that knowledge, by contrast with belief, is an attitude to a fact and explore the implications of this claim for doxasticism and epistemicism. (shrink)

Many scholars claim that democracy improves population health. The prevailing explanation for this is that democratic regimes distribute health-promoting resources more widely than autocratic regimes. The central contention of this article is that democracies also have a significant pro-health effect independently of public redistributive policies. After establishing the theoretical plausibility of the non-distributive effect a panel of 153 countries for the years 1972 to 2000 is used to examine the relationship between extent of democratic experience and life expectancy. We find (...) that democratic governance continues to have a salutary effect on population health even when controls are introduced for the distribution of health-enhancing resources. Data for 50 autocratic countries for the years 1994 to 2007 is then used to examine whether that press freedom has a positive impact on life expectancy independently of government responsiveness. (shrink)

A standard criticism of utilitarianism is that it is only indirectly concerned with the distribution of welfare between individuals and, therefore, does not take adequate account of the separateness between individuals. This has led some to conclude that the utilitarian must either downplay the moral significance of distinct identities (e.g. Parfit) or concede that justice represents a prior and independent constraint on the pursuit of the good (e.g. Rawls). An intriguing alternative presents itself if we accept that intrinsic value for (...) the world is independently generated by the receipt of welfare and the degree to which receipt accords with the demands of justice. Fred Feldman, for example, argues that an action is right if and only if it maximizes the sum of both these sources of intrinsic value. The proposal retains the aggregative structure of utilitarianism and takes into account the morally relevant differences between individuals. In response I argue that justice-adjusted utilitarianism collapses into a deontological theory because (i) the axiology assigns lexical priority to justice and (ii) the alleged intrinsic value of justice is entirely derivative. (shrink)

Literature has an ethical obligation to respond to the climate change crisis, and scholars have a responsibility to understand how these responses work. Neither the humanities nor the sciences have a good record when it comes to encouraging people to limit their desires, their consumption, or their growth. While there may be genetic reasons for this failure, calls for humanity to limit itself need better responses. Literature can help us to respond better to climate change, but only if we reconceptualize (...) narrative and accord to it the importance it once held as a source not only of entertainment but of knowledge necessary for our very survival. (shrink)

Durant ces dernières années, le comportement sexuel des jeunes femmes dans les pays en voie de développement occupe une place de plus en plus importante dans les programmes de santé reproductive. En effet, à Haïti, par exemple, près de 35 % d’entre elles ont deux partenaires sexuels ou plus, ce qui a des conséquences fâcheuses tant sur la jeune fille que sur son environnement. L’objectif de cet article est d’identifier les différents facteurs socio-économiques qui influencent le multipartenariat sexuel chez les (...) jeunes femmes à Haïti. Les données utilisées dans le cadre de ce présent article proviennent de la dernière Enquête démographique et de santé (2017) et ont fait l’objet d’une analyse univariée et d’une analyse multivariée à travers un modèle logit. De ces analyses, il ressort que les variables « milieu de résidence », « niveau d’éducation », « religion », « niveau de vie », « accès à Internet » et « statut matrimonial » sont les facteurs clés dans l’explication du multipartenariat sexuel observé chez les jeunes filles à Haïti. (shrink)

Rather than defend each instance of problem suggested by Williams, what I propose to do is to respond by making two clarificatory points: first, I rule out two ways of understanding mathematical problems that might be clouding the water; and then, second, I further characterise how Deleuze thinks some mathematical problems, two in particular, are not just examples of mathematical problems, but provide mathematical models for what a mathematical problem in general can be understood to be. This is important because (...) it is how mathematical problems can be modelled in mathematics that provides Deleuze with a model for how problems can be modelled in other discourses. This will then get to the bottom of what is at stake in my approach to Deleuze and to Deleuze studies in general. (shrink)

A heuristic comparison is made of relativistic and non-relativistic quantum theory. To this end the Segal approach is described for the non-specialist. The significance of antimatter to the local and microcausal properties of the fields is laid bare. The fundamental difference between relativistic and non-relativistic (complex) fields is traced to the existence of two kinds of complex numbers in the relativistic case. Their relation to covariant and Newton-Wigner locality is formulated.

We should be suspicious of the idea that experiencing pain could enable animals to trade off different motivations in a common currency. It is not even clear that humans have a common motivational currency reflected in evaluative experience. Instead, pain may capture attention, inhibiting attention to competing motivations and needs, thereby making genuine trade-offs harder. Our criteria for pain in invertebrates should be part of a more subtle theory of the relationship between pain and decision-making.

Positive mental health involves not the absence of mental disorder but rather the presence of certain mental goods. Institutions, practitioners, and theorists often identify positive mental health with well‐being. There are strong reasons, however, to keep the concepts of well‐being and positive mental health separate. Someone with high positive mental health can have low well‐being, someone with high well‐being can have low positive mental health, and well‐being and positive mental health sometimes conflict. But, while positive mental health and well‐being are (...) not identical, there is an informative conceptual connection between them. Positive mental health usually contributes instrumentally to the living of a good human life, where a good human life includes (but is not limited to) well‐being. (shrink)

. Genuine Reality is recommended reading for all soul-searchers."—George Gurley, Chicago Tribune "Ms. Simon . . . has provided an ideal pathway for James's striding. . . . [Y]ou become engaged in his struggles as if they were your own. ...

This paper essentially makes two remarks that are pertinent to many of the axiomatisations of subjective probability. First, the auxiliary experiment used to quantify qualitative feelings of relative likelihood is essentially distinct from the field of events of actual interest and may be kept so in the axiomatisation. Second, all theories of subjective probability agree that beliefs are conditional on the present state of knowledge and on the present mood and attitude of the individual concerned. As the individual moves through (...) time this conditioning set, his knowledge and psychological state, change. This ever present change has implications for the conditions under which Bayes' Theorem may be invoked to prescribe how the individual should rationally update his beliefs in the light of a particular observation. (shrink)