The aim of this essay is to distinguish and analyze several difficulties confronting attempts to reconcile the fundamental quantum mechanical dynamics with Born''s rule. It is shown that many of the proposed accounts of measurement fail at least one of the problems. In particular, only collapse theories and hidden variables theories have a chance of succeeding, and, of the latter, the modal interpretations fail. Any real solution demands new physics.

Explanation does not exist in a metaphysical vacuum. Conceptions of the structure of a phenomenon play an important role in guiding attempts to explain it, and erroneous conceptions of a phenomenon may direct investigation in misleading directions. I believe that there is a case to be made for thinking that much work on the neural underpinnings of consciousness—what is often called the neural correlates of consciousness—is driven by an erroneous conception of the structure of consciousness. The aim of this paper (...) is lay bare some connections between the explanation of consciousness and the structure of consciousness, and to argue for a conception of the structure of consciousness that is more adequate than that which currently drives much research into the neural correlates of consciousness. (shrink)

Tim Stuart-Buttle offers a fresh view of British moral philosophy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In this period of remarkable innovation, philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume combined critique of the role of Christianity in moral thought with reconsideration of the legacy of the classical tradition of academic scepticism.

argues that when reproduction is sexual, natural selection can explain why individual organisms possess the traits they do. In stating his argument Matthen makes use of a conception of individual organisms as receptacles for collections of genes—a conception that cannot do the work Matthen requires of it. Either these receptacles are abstract objects, such as bare possibilities for organisms, or they are concrete. The first reading is too weak, since it allows selection to explain individual traits in both sexual and (...) asexual contexts. The only concrete entities we might think of as receptacles for collections of genes are male or female gametes. It is true that in the sexual context selection explains why an individual gamete combines with a second gamete of one type rather than another; however, this is not to say that selection explains why an individual organism has the traits it does. (shrink)

The four tenets of the Strong Program are compatible with a scientific realism founded on an externalist epistemology. Such an epistemology allows that appropriate norms of rationality may differ from time to time, and from community to community, and thereby enables the realist to embrace strong forms of the ‘symmetry principle’. It also suggests a fruitful collaborative research program in externalist social epistemology. Some of what the Edinburgh School says about truth can also be accepted. But the realist should reject (...) the School's argument for the claim that there is no distinction between being rational and being locally accepted as rational, which seems to rest on a kind of epistemological internalism. Introducing the Strong Program Realism and the four tenets A stronger reading of symmetry Conflict and cooperation A note on discovery and justification Relativism and realism Truth Points of contention: the restriction of explanatory contrasts Points of contention: standards of rationality. (shrink)

Grice (1957) drew a distinction between natural(N) and non–natural(NN) meaning, and showed how the latter might be characterised in terms of intentions and the recognition of intentions. Focussing on the role of natural signs and natural behaviours in communication, this paper makes two main points. First, verbal communication often involves a mixture of natural and non–natural meaning and there is a continuum of cases between showing and meaningNN. This suggests that pragmatics is best seen as a theory of intentional verbal (...) communication rather than a theory of meaningNN. Second, some natural behaviours have a signalling function: they are, in effect, natural codes. Such behaviours do not fit easily into Grice's distinction between natural and non–natural meaning, which suggests it is not exhaustive. (shrink)

Imagine living in the future in a world already damaged by humankind, a world where resources are insufficient to meet everyone's basic needs and where a chaotic climate makes life precarious. Then imagine looking back into the past, back to our own time and assessing the ethics of the early twenty-first century. "Ethics for a Broken World" imagines how the future might judge us and how living in a time of global environmental degradation might utterly reshape the politics and ethics (...) of the future. This book is presented as a series of history of philosophy lectures given in the future, studying the classic texts from a past age of affluence, our own time. The central ethical questions of our time are shown to look very different from the perspective of a ruined world. The aim of "Ethics for a Broken" World is to look at our present with the benefit of hindsight - to reimagine contemporary philosophy in an historical context - and to highlight the contingency of our own moral and political ideals. (shrink)

In American Heat, Donald Brown critically analyzes the U.S. response to global warming, inviting readers to examine the implicit morality of the U.S position, and ultimately to help lead the world toward an equitable sharing of the burdens and benefits of protecting the global environment. In short, Brown argues that an ethical focus on global environmental matters is the key to achieving a globally acceptable solution.

Drawing on the author's recent bookEthics for a Broken World, this article explores the philosophical implications of the fact that climate change – or something like it – might lead to abroken worldwhere resources are insufficient to meet everyone's basic needs, and where our affluent way of life is no longer an option. It argues that the broken world has an impact, not only on applied ethics, but also on moral theory. It then explores that impact. The article first argues (...) that the broken world creates severe difficulties for both libertarians and contractualists. It then explores the impact of the broken world on utilitarianism – and especially on reflective equilibrium arguments for rule-utilitarianism. The article concludes that, while such arguments may still be viable, the form of rule-utilitarianism that results will be less moderate and less liberal than contemporary rule-utilitarians might hope. (shrink)

Our everyday notions of responsibility are often driven by our need to justify ourselves to specific others – especially those we harm, wrong, or otherwise affect. One challenge for contemporary ethics is to extend this interpersonal urgency to our relations with those future people who are harmed or affected by our actions. In this article, I explore our responsibility for climate change by imagining a possible ‘broken future’, damaged by the carbon emissions of previous generations, and then asking what its (...) inhabitants might think of our current behaviour, our moral thinking, and our excuses. In particular, I will focus on a simplified scenario where present people can only avoid a broken future by sacrificing Rawlsian favourable conditions. Suppose we refuse to avoid a broken future, on the grounds that we cannot be expected to make such great sacrifices. If the broken future lacks favourable conditions, will its inhabitants accept our excuses? Will they hold us responsible for things we regard as excusable? If so, should we be guided by their judgements or by our own? (shrink)

Moral realists can, and should, allow that the truth-conditional content of moral judgments is in part attitudinal. I develop a two-dimensional semantics that embraces attitudinal content while preserving realist convictions about the independence of moral facts from our attitudes. Relative to worlds “considered as counterfactual,” moral terms rigidly track objective, response-independent properties. But relative to different ways the actual world turns out to be, they nonrigidly track whatever properties turn out to be the objects of our relevant attitudes. This theory (...) provides realists with a satisfactory account of Moral Twin Earth cases and an improved response to Blackburn’s supervenience argument. (shrink)

Traditional Consequentialism is based on a demanding principle of impartial maximization. Michael Slote's 'Satisficing Consequentialism' aims to reduce the demands of Consequentialism, by no longer requiring us to bring about the best possible outcome. This paper presents a new objection to Satisficing Consequentialism. We begin with a simple thought experiment, in which an agent must choose whether to save the lives of ten innocent people by using a sand bag or by killing an innocent person. The main aim of the (...) paper is to demonstrate that, if it is to avoid making unreasonable demands, Satisficing Consequentialism must allow such an agent to kill. It is argued that this result is much more counter-intuitive than the fact that Maximizing Consequentialism permits agents to kill in order to produce the best consequences. The conclusion is that Satisficing Consequentialism is not an acceptable moral theory. (shrink)

Historically, interjections have been treated in two different ways: as part of language, or as non-words signifying feelings or states of mind. In this paper, I assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of two contemporary approaches that reflect the historical dichotomy, and suggest a new analysis which preserves the insights of both. Interjections have a natural and a coded element, and are better analysed as falling at various points along a continuum between ‘showing’ and ‘saying’. These two notions are characterised (...) in theoretical terms, and some implications of the proposed approach are considered. (shrink)

I argue that attempts to give philosophical accounts of meaningfulness in life are largely empty since there is no unitary concept to be analysed, and there are no criteria for what will count as success in that project. I suggest that there is a better prospect for giving an account of meaninglessness in life, and that efforts are more usefully directed at this project. I then offer such an account in which it is proposed that what often (but not always) (...) underlies feelings that life is meaningless is a matter of the person concerned finding nothing worth doing, pursuing or aspiring to; that is, their finding nothing to be of value. The account is then modified and expanded, and is found to usefully explain the phenomena of anhedonia, distress and failure of motivation frequently associated with feelings of meaninglessness. The account is not intended as a conceptual analysis, but as an explanation of what is (often) happening when people find life meaningless. The paper concludes with discussions of what may be said about meaningfulness in the light of the offered account of meaninglessness, and of the distinction between life being felt to be meaningless, and life actually being meaningless. (shrink)

Deirdre Wilson (2018)provides a reflective overview of a volume devoted to the historic application of relevance-theoretic ideas to literary studies. She maintains a view argued elsewhere that the putative non-propositional nature of (among other things) literary effects are an illusion, a view which dates to Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 224): “If you look at [non-propositional] affective effects through the microscope of relevance theory, you see a wide array of minute cognitive [i.e., propositional] effects.” This paper suggests an alternative, that modern-day (...) humans have two apparently different modes of expressing and interpreting information: one of these is a system in which propositional, cognitive effects dominate; the other involves direct, non-propositional effects. The paper concludes by describing two ways such affects might be assimilated into relevance theory. The first, to accept that humans are much more than merely cognitive organisms; the second, to rethink quite radically what we mean by cognition. (shrink)

The representations formed by the ventral and dorsal streams of a prelinguistic agent will tend to be too qualitatively similar to support the distinct roles required by PREDICATE(x) structure. We suggest that the attachment of qualities to objects is not a product of the combination of these separate processing streams, but is instead a part of the processing required in each. In addition, we suggest that the formation of objective predicates is inextricably bound up with the emergence of language itself, (...) and so cannot be cleanly identified with any prelinguistic cognitive capacities. (shrink)

A basic feature of liberal political philosophy is its commitment to religious neut‐rality. Contemporary philosophical discussion of intergenerational justice violates this com‐mitment, as it proceeds on the basis of controversial metaphysical assumptions. The Contractualist notion of a power imbalance between generations and Derek Parfit’s non‐identity claims both presuppose that humans are not reborn. Yet belief in rebirth underlies Hindu and Buddhist traditions espoused by millions throughout the world. These traditions clearly constitute what John Rawls dubs “reasonable comprehensive doctrines”, and therefore (...) cannot be dismissed by political liberals. In many societies, including the USA, the UK, and India, belief in rebirth exists alongside other traditions, as well as modern Western views. A liberal theory for such societies must be impartial regarding rebirth, and the after‐life in general. Two alternatives forms of liberal neutrality are sketched, based on Contractualism and Consequentialism. (shrink)

Despite liberalism's considerable internal heterogeneity, liberal approaches to the management of ethno‐cultural relations in diverse societies are unified in one respect: they revolve around the implicit assumption that there are three distinct approaches the state can take toward this issue, namely, domination by one cultural group, a politics of recognition, and state neutrality. This articles argues that in the context of an unequal distribution of societal power among ethno‐cultural groups there are, in fact, only two basic state approaches to the (...) management of diversity: privilege and recognition. The liberal idea of state neutrality, instead of representing a third alternative, falls squarely within the privilege approach. State neutrality is a cornerstone of currently predominant strands of liberalism. However, drawing on Walzer's distinction between the two types of liberalism, the article demonstrates that a politics of recognition is not necessarily irreconcilable with liberal tenets. (shrink)

Neither the pathogenesis nor the aetiology of Down's syndrome (DS) are clearly understood. Numerous studies have examined whether clinical features of DS are a consequence of specific chromosome 21 segments being triplicated. There is no evidence, however, that individual loci are responsible, or that the oxidative damage in DS could be solely explained by a gene dosage effect. Using astrocytes and neuronal cultures from DS fetuses, a recent paper shows that altered metabolism of the amyloid precursor protein and oxidative stress (...) result from mitochondrial dysfunction.1 These findings are consistent with considerable data implicating the role of the mitochondrial genome in DS pathogenesis and aetiology. BioEssays 24:681–684, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This chapter begins with Augustine of Hippo’s curious assumption, in The City of God, that in The Golden Ass the claim to have been transformed into a donkey was Apuleius’, rather than that of the fictional narrator, Lucius. Why should Augustine have made such a glaring error? The chapter argues that antiquity lacked a strong sense of ‘the narrator’. What we tend to call ‘first-person’, antiquity would have understood as ‘fictional autobiography’, in which the author illusionistically impersonates the narrating character.

ArgumentThe article takes as its starting point the relationship of academic economists and the wider society. First, various bodies of literature that deal empirically with this matter are discussed: epistemologically, they range from a bold structuralism via a form of symbolic interactionism to a form of radical constructivism. A Bourdieusian approach is recommended to complement these perspectives with a comprehensive perspective that is sensible to the cultural differences between social groups. Starting from the established notions of field, capital and habitus, (...) the article then attempts to go the initial steps towards formulating a theory of the specificity of academic economics, taking Germany as its example. For that it uses and compares in-depth interviews of recognized and non-recognized German economics students. It shows the thorough interweaving of specific normative and positive dispositions into a conviction of objectivity and disinterestedness. This exploratory empirical induction furthers follow-up questions, the empirical answering of which may help to gain a more complete understanding of the actions and thoughts of economists in their specific contexts. (shrink)

This article explores some of the intellectual influences which have shaped the development of Critical Legal Studies in Britain and the contexts in which these influences made themselves felt. It then considers which influences might or should steer Critical Legal Studies in the future. In terms of the past, specific attention is given to the influence of Marxism, Freud and Lacan, feminism, Foucault and Derrida, and recent genres of history-writing. As to the future, the question is asked whether Critical Legal (...) Studies will engage constructively with recent developments in the life sciences and the philosophy of science, and, more generally, whether it will be able to surpass its established mooring in the philosophy of history. (shrink)

Unter den klassischen Vertretern der deutschen Geistesgeschichte ist Georg Simmel der eher unklassische Denker, der keiner Fachdisziplin eindeutig zugerechnet werden kann. Sein Denken reicht in viele Bereiche der Philosophie und der Wissenschaften, der geistigen Kultur und der Alltagswelt hinein. Dieser Band verfolgt das Ziel, den Philosophen Georg Simmel (wieder) zu entdecken. Im Zentrum der Forschungsarbeiten stehen bisher weitgehend vernachlässigte systematische Fragen, z.B.: Gibt es einen archimedischen Punkt im Denken Simmels oder organisiert sich Simmels Analyse der Phänomene des inneren und äußeren (...) Lebens je nach Gegenstandsbereich neu? (shrink)

Philosopher Ewa Majewska's impressive new book aims at nothing less than changing the structures of thinking and feeling that shore up the liberal vision and practice of the public sphere. This structural shift is proposed to resist and ultimately block the rise of contemporary fascism. This seems brave and immense but because Majewska's methods are not revolutionary but rather rest in the quotidian, it comes to be seen as credible. It is, of course, a necessary goal, so it is reassuring (...) that her arguments provide tools for transformation.Majewska's argument rests on a challenge to the classic liberal division between public and private, and insists that solidarity should rather be a core model for politics. The... (shrink)

Were the Greek novels titled according to a consistent convention? This article confronts the view that the original titles were always historiographical in form (Assyriaka, Lesbiaka, Aithiopika, etc.) and that readers were thus steered to expect, in the first instance, realistic narrative. Examining the evidence in detail, it argues that the formula the novels were likeliest to have shared was ta kata + girl's name (or girl's + boy's names). On this basis, it is concluded that what the titles of (...) the novels promised was primarily invasive narratives of private life. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the famous punishment of the delatores by Trajan in a spectaculum described in chapters 33-36 of Pliny’s Panegyricus. The examination of this scene on a literary level with the help of textual analysis and interpretation seeks to illustrate how Pliny displays Trajan’s actions as well as the devices and techniques that Pliny uses to achieve his panegyrical purpose. Noteworthy is the integration of religious terminology, the choice of perspective and the actual comparisons with Trajan’s predecessors. (...) Thus, Trajan appears as a link between humans and gods, and Pliny’s depiction of his actions elevates him to the divine level as far as possible. (shrink)

Bridging between psychological and neurobiological systems requires that the system components are closely specified at both the psychological and brain levels of analysis. We argue that in developing his dynamic systems theory framework, Lewis has sidestepped the notion of a psychological level systems model altogether, and has taken a partisan approach to his exposition of a brain-level systems model.

There has been increasing use of argument-based approaches in the development of safety-critical systems. Within this approach, a safety case plays a key role in the system development life cycle. The key components in a safety case are safety arguments, which are designated to demonstrate that the system is acceptably safe. Inappropriate reasoning in safety arguments could undermine a system's safety claims which in turn contribute to safety-related failures of the system. The review of safety arguments is therefore a crucial (...) step in the development of safety-critical systems. Reviews are conducted using dialogues where elements of the argument and their relations are proposed and scrutinised. This paper investigates an approach of conducting argument review using dialectical models. After studying five established dialectical models with varying strengths and drawbacks, a new dialectical model specially designed to support persuasion and information-seeking dialogues has been proposed to suit the requir... (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag setzt sich kritisch mit einer Schlüsselkategorie der Weber’schen Soziologie auseinander: dem Charisma. Dieser Kategorie war und ist bis heute ein großer kommunikativer Erfolg beschieden, hat also eine breite Rezeption in der internationalen Forschung erfahren. Dieser Umstand bedeutet allerdings nicht, dass Webers Charisma-Begriff keine Kritik erfahren hätte. Ganz im Gegenteil. Fast jeder Weber-Kenner hat auch Kritik an der fraglichen Kategorie geäußert. Dieser gilt es in dem Beitrag nachzuspüren, um zu einer Erhöhung des Problembewusstseins der Forschung hinsichtlich der Rede (...) vom ‚Charisma‘ beizutragen. Zugleich wird der Versuch unternommen, die fragliche Kategorie differenztheoretisch und relational zu wenden, um somit ihr heuristisches Potential zu schärfen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Love and Providence: Recognition in the Ancient Novel by Silvia MontiglioTim WhitmarshSilvia Montiglio. Love and Providence: Recognition in the Ancient Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. ix + 255 pp. Cloth, $74.Terence Cave’s Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) opened up the subject of recognition scenes to a new readership, with sparkling discussions not just of the medieval and renaissance literature of his own (...) specialism, but also of its Classical antecedents. Without offering (and without claiming to offer) a systematic study of the ancient sources, Cave demonstrated the power and capaciousness of the motif, in particular through a wonderfully dexterous reading of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. For Cave, recognition is a dangerous force at both the social and the literary levels: it threatens to expose the fictionality of identity as a construct of human relations (for recognition is an act of collective assent, not an acknowledgement of any kind of deep truth), and indeed the fictionality of fiction itself.Silvia Montiglio’s new book treats not the entirety of Classical literature but an impressive range of novelistic texts, covering not just the canonical Greek and Latin works but also Jewish and Christian material such as Joseph and Aseneth, the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions (unavoidable, perhaps!), and Apollonius, King of Tyre. Montiglio avoids Cave’s grand, theoretical claims about what recognition is and focuses instead on what it does within the texts. Her procedure is to stick closely to the contours of the text, tracing the progress of themes through the narrative. In contrast to Cave, Montiglio sees recognition as primarily running along the dominant ideological grains of the individual novels: in the Greek and Judaeo-Christian texts at any rate it exists in order to affirm the idealising thrust, be it matrimonial or religious. Recognition’s primary role, for Montiglio, is to affirm identity, to validate the relationships to which texts normatively commit.The book proceeds via a series of close, immersive encounters with the texts. Although prodigiously widely read in the modern literature on the novels, Montiglio has little interest in wider social frameworks, and is virtually immune to the theoretical and cultural-historical bugs doing the rounds: intertextuality (though she is certainly alive to the power of literary precedent), narratology, cognitive theory, gender, sexuality, identity, cultural transfer, and so forth. Her story, rather, concerns the fluctuations of literary form across a range of periods and texts, and comparisons between different handlings of this central (but rather [End Page 166] neglected) topos. Although rather more detailed, sophisticated, and wide-ranging in its subject-matter, it harks back in a way to some of the motif-based, formalist novel scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s: Consuelo Ruiz Montero’s La estructura de la novela griega: análisis funcional (Salamanca 1988), Bryan Reardon’s The Form of Greek Romance (Princeton 1991), Françoise Létoublon’s Les lieux communs du roman: stéréotypes grecs d’aventure et d’amour (Leiden 1993).Five substantial chapters deal with Chariton and Xenophon (chap. 1), Achilles and Longus (chap. 2), Heliodorus (chap. 3), Petronius and Apuleius (chap. 4), and the Jewish and Christian “novels” (chap. 5). This cumulative approach allows her to ease a story out of her material by progressively comparing later to earlier treatments of similar themes. To restate it simply, her argument is that Chariton and Xenophon handle recognition relatively “straight,” presenting it as an opportunity for the lovers to reunite triumphantly and to reassert their love (although there are multiple other recognitions that interact with the lovers’ own). In Chariton there is an interesting emphasis on the power of the voice to impel recognition. Achilles, characteristically, turns the topos inside out: in this novel preoccupied with self-presentation, display, and disguise, Clitophon repeatedly fails to recognise Leucippe. In Longus, the central recognition is the New Comedy–style acknowledgement of the lovers by their parents, which not only validates their identities as urban aristos but also legitimises their love for each other. Heliodorus has the most elaborate recognition scene of all, with the extended revelation of Charicleia’s identity offsetting and finally banishing all the perceptual misdirection of the earlier parts of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

Cet article se penche sur la représentation de la famille des Éolides dans le Catalogue des femmes du pseudo-Hésiode. Les Éolides, qui apparaissent très tôt dans le cycle mythique (et de façon particulièrement proche de la phase originelle de la vie humaine dans laquelle dieux et mortels ont été convives), présentent un cas remarquable de jalousie du divin. Ils cherchent en particulier à rivaliser avec la divinité en faisant usage d’artefacts humains : le langage, l’artisanat, le spectacle. Cette emphase sur (...) l’artificiel implique la croyance, parmi certains d’entre les Éolides (croyance qui cependant n’est pas à première vue assumée par le poème) que la divinité peut être elle-même considérée comme une invention humaine. On peut contextualiser cette croyance en la comparant aux forces culturelles de créativité technologique plus vastes à la période archaïque, en particulier au développement des représentations artistiques des dieux. (shrink)

Immer mehr sehen wir uns in die Lage versetzt, aktiv Einfluss nicht nur auf unsere Existenz und unser Leben, sondern auch auf die Bedingungen unseres Sterbens zu nehmen. Alterungsprozesse aber auch unser Tod gelangen zunehmend in den Verfügungsbereich unserer Selbstbestimmung und sind zu einem gewissen Grade gestaltbar geworden. Offen ist, wohin dieser Trend vor dem Hintergrund aktueller technologischer Fortschritte noch führen mag. Gegenwärtig sind wir mit den Problemen einer alternden Bevölkerung, einer unzureichenden Altenpflege und einer mangelhaften Alterskultur konfrontiert, die nach (...) gesellschaftspolitischen und medizinethischen Handlungsoptionen verlangen. Zugleich kursieren Zukunftsvisionen, in denen der physiologische Verfall im Zuge des Alterns und damit auch die Leiblichkeit des Menschen insgesamt als defizitär betrachtet wird. Alternative Lebensentwürfe in post- oder transhumanistischen Kreisen betrachten den Tod als extreme Grenzerfahrung, die es zu verhüten gilt. Eine selbstbestimmte Existenz wird mit Selbstoptimierung gleichgesetzt – und sei es auch um den Preis des eigenen Leibes. Werden hier die Grenzen des Menschseins erweitert oder verengt? (shrink)