According to embodied cognition theory, our physical embodiment influences how we conceptualize entities, whether natural or supernatural. In serving central explanatory roles, supernatural entities (e.g., God) are represented implicitly as having unordinary properties that nevertheless do not violate our sensorimotor interactions with the physical world. We conjecture that other supernatural entities are similarly represented in explanatory contexts.

Sex selection and disability avoidance receive opposed treatment in bioethics literature, legislative practice and public opinion. However, some theorists question this state of affairs by drawing analogies between the harmful consequences of these practices. This paper shares their disapproval of gender selection and disability avoidance, but bases its resistance to these practices on an examination of the concepts of gender and disability. Here it identifies conceptual confusions as another cause of approval of sex selection and disability avoidance. Further, in clarifying (...) the nature of the concepts at issue, and their relationship with the subjects that they apply to, this discussion highlights the existence of relevant analogies between the concepts of gender and disability. Here the social construction and universality of gender and disability allow their differential treatment to be resisted at the conceptual level, creating a strong foundation for more consequentialist arguments against sex selection and disability avoidance. (shrink)

Each Girard quantale (i.e., commutative quantale with a selected dualizing element) provides a support for a semantics for linear propositional formulas (but not for linear derivations). Several constructions of Girard quantales are known. We give two more constructions, one using an arbitrary partially ordered monoid and one using a partially ordered group (both commutative). In both cases the semantics can be controlled be a relation between pairs of elements of the support and formulas. This gives us a neat way of (...) handling duality. (shrink)

We present a theoretical and an empirical challenge to Cushman's claim that rationalization is adaptive because it allows humans to extract more accurate beliefs from our non-rational motivations for behavior. Rationalization sometimes generates more adaptive decisions by making our beliefs about the world less accurate. We suggest that the most important adaptive advantage of rationalization is instead that it increases our predictability as potential partners in cooperative social interactions.

The present dissertation consists of a developmental account of the problem of the ontological status of individuality as manifested initially in the metaphysical thought of Aristotle and subsequently developed by Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francis Suarez. ;The philosophical context for the problem of individuality's ontological status is set by the theme, prominent in Greek philosophy, of unity as a mark of what is most real and most perfect. The historical precedent for viewing individuality as fitting under this theme, and (...) thus as having ontological importance, is provided by Aristotle's doctrine of primary substance, which characterizes individuality as a type of unity that pertains to the most fundamental aspects of reality such as this man or this horse. Though this doctrine highlights the ontological primacy of individual entities, the specific issues of where individuality fits on the ontological map, and what role it plays in constituting substances, are discussed only indirectly by Aristotle. These matters remain mostly unaddressed until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which individuality becomes a focal point of philosophical discussion due to the integration of Aristotelian metaphysical thought into Christian doctrine and the accompanying recognition of individuality as a topic of critical importance. ;The problem of individuality's ontological status can be summarized in terms of two questions. First, what kind of thing is individuality, i.e., where does it fit on the ontological map? Second, how is individuality related to the other metaphysical aspects of a thing, such as their form, common nature, etc.? Aquinas's treatment of this problem reveals strong roots in the Aristotelian doctrines of substance and of unity as a transcendental attribute of being. Scotus's account likewise is developed in the context of the aforementioned Aristotelian notions, but is more extensive than Aquinas's and more suggestive of individuality's importance given Scotus's identification of metaphysics as the science of the transcendentals and of individuality as a transcendental. Suarez's treatment of the ontological status of individuality builds upon these notions, synthesizing the insights of his predecessors to formulate an account that is more explicit, more precise, and in many ways more rigorous than his predecessors' accounts. (shrink)

A recent article in this journal described practical and conceptual difficulties faced by public health researchers studying scabies outbreaks in British residential care facilities. Their study population was elderly, decisionally incapacitated residents, many of whom lacked a legally appropriate decision-maker for healthcare decisions. The researchers reported difficulties securing Research Ethics Committee approval. As practicing healthcare ethicists working in a large Canadian research hospital, we are familiar with this challenge and welcomed the authors’ invitation to join the discussion of the ‘outstanding (...) ambiguities and further questions’ that their experience uncovered. We propose a Power of Attorney for Research as one substantive solution to help address the problems they identified. Although we acknowledge the familiar shortcomings associated with Advance Directives in the clinical context, we believe that Powers of Attorney for Research Participation, accompanied by Advance Research Directives, may increase the likelihood of gaining deeper understandings of potential participant’s values and priorities and how they might apply to foreseeable research opportunities. (shrink)

Hayek argued that the central question of economics is the coordination problem: How does the spontaneous interaction of many purposeful individuals, each having dispersed bits of subjective knowledge, generate an order in which the actors' subjective data are coordinated in a way that enables them to dovetail their plans and activities successfully? In attempting to solve this problem, Hayek outlined an approach to economic theorizing that takes seriously the limited, subjective nature of human knowledge. Despite purporting to have appropriated Hayek's (...) thought by acknowledging the information-transmitting role of prices, mainstream economists have missed Hayek's point. The predominant tool of formal economics—equilibrium analysis—begins by assuming the data held by actors to have been pre-reconciled, and so evades the problem to be solved. Even the more advanced tools for modeling knowledge in economic analysis, such as the economics of information, assume away either the subjectivism of knowledge and expectations (rendering the coordination of beliefs and plans a trivial matter) or the frictions and “imperfections” of reality (rendering the coordination problem indeterminate). (shrink)

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

"Audaces fortuna invat. Dynamin sophian kyle baraka. Many or few, always bold"--Front cover.

(1) a. Satoshi sent Thilo the Schw¨abische W¨orterbuch. b. Satoshi sent the Schw¨abische W¨orterbuch to Thilo. Many have entertained the notion that there is a rule that relates sentences such as these. This is suggested by the fact that it is possible to learn that a newly coined verb licenses one of them and automatically know that it licenses the other. Marantz (1984) argues for the existence of such a rule in this way, noting that once one has learned of (...) the new verb shin by exposure to (2a), the grammaticality of (2b) is also learned. (2) a. Thilo shinned the ball to Satoshi. b. Thilo shinned Satoshi the ball. This is explained if there is a rule that ties the double object frame together with the NP+PP frame, making it sufficient to know that a verb licenses one if it licenses the other. Frequently, the rule involved has been taken to be syntactic in nature. See, among many others, Fillmore (1965), Oehrle (1976), Baker (1988), and Larson (1988). The leading idea under this view is that the two frames are simply different surface manifestations of the same underlying structure. Typically, this approach posits that the NP+PP frame represents that underlying structure from which the double object frame is transformationally derived. There is evidence, however, that the two frames instead have different underlying structures, and are not related by transformation. This evidence, then. (shrink)

With his 1951 publication of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, W.V.O. Quine launched a series of arguments against the idea that analyticity – “truth in virtue of meaning alone” – could be a philosophically explanatory notion. While his rejection represents a significant philosophical stride in its own right, to which many in the contemporary philosophical scene pay verbal respects, the revolutionary consequences of this insight often go ignored today. Much of current professional philosophy in virtually every sub-discipline carries on as though (...) analyticity were a viable notion, because much of it aims at conceptual analysis – the “discovery” of the meanings of philosophical concepts, such as ‘mind’, ‘truth’, ‘meaning’, ‘person’, and ‘right’. Rejecting analyticity as a viable philosophical notion undermines such efforts insofar as they aim at conceptual analysis. If philosophers give up the notion of analyticity, as they should, they are left with the questions of what goals and methods are viable for the analysis of concepts. One option is to concentrate effort on explication of familiar concepts; explication is an alternative to conceptual analysis in that it does not aim to dig out analytic truths about given concepts. Rather, it identifies what is interesting about a certain vague concept, and generates a new, more rigorous and precise concept to replace the old one. The justification for the replacement, in the most appealing cases, is in the possibilities for understanding that are introduced by the new explication. Examples of explication in my sense are the replacement of ordinary grammatical terms by the operators of first order logic, replacement of ‘game’ with a decision theoretic notion of games in game theory, and replacement of ‘true’ with ‘true-in-L’ in Tarskian semantics. Advances of this sort depart consciously in some ways from ordinary usage of the terms they focus on, but in so departing, they develop new possibilities and perspectives for rigorously understanding the world. In the dissertation that follows, I not only recommend explication as a method, I also put it into practice. I develop an explication of the sameness and difference relations that relies solely on the relation of denotation between a predicate and objects of which it is true. Two things are the same with respect to R just in case there is at least one R-predicate that denotes them in common. I used this explication to develop related explications of similarity and analogy. These latter explications, I use to critique the current fashion of research on similarity and analogy in cognitive psychology. These studies have produced an immense body of interesting and promising work in the past several decades; however, much of the research design and data interpretation harbors philosophical errors and so often imports unjustified prejudices from the researchers themselves. My explication offers alternative formulations of the most salient aspects of these research traditions, formulations that avoid the errors of past research and, more importantly, suggest new research questions and possibilities that would not occur under the previous, philosophically muddled paradigm. The project closes with an application of my explication of analogy to a discussion and critique of the philosophical literature on analogical arguments. While philosophers and logicians have developed workable theories for deductive and inductive reasoning, very little work of promise has been done on analogical arguments. My explication of analogy is used to diagnose the problems of past attempts by philosophers to develop logics for analogical arguments and suggest, in light of the psychological research on analogy and the use of analogies in scientific thought, that philosophers should focus on analogical arguments as creative, heuristic devices, rather than as truth-preserving inference structures. (shrink)

On the Edge of Anarchy completes A. John Simmons's exploration and development of Lockean moral and political philosophy, a project begun in The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, 1992). In this new book, Simmons discusses the Lockean view of the nature of, grounds for, and limits on political relations between persons. Locke's ideas on this topic are probably the most influential in the history of political thought, but their philosophical virtues and implications have remained largely unappreciated. Here (...) class='Hi'>Simmons remedies this situation by treating Locke as a philosopher, rather than as a theologian or an activist writing rhetorical political tracts. Locke's works emerge not as episodes in the history of ideas but as bodies of arguments addressing the same questions as contemporary philosophy. This book pursues the issues Locke raises far beyond the boundaries of his own texts and theories. By criticizing, streamlining, and developing Locke's views, Simmons elaborates a powerful Lockean political philosophy with strongly anarchistic implications. On the Edge of Anarchy will interest not only Locke specialists and political philosophers, but also students and professionals in philosophy, government, and law - and all others who are interested in the foundational political principles embraced and celebrated by Anglo-American societies. (shrink)

Reflecting on our engagement with fiction has compelled some theorists to expand the domain of the mental. They have posited a novel conative state, so-called “i-desire”. The central thesis of this approach is that i-desire relates to imagination in the same way as desire relates to belief. We formulate principles which are plausible consequences of this thesis. We then put pressure on these principles by focusing on desire concepts such as hoping, and show that the imaginative analogues of these concepts—if (...) such there be—do not satisfy the principles. We conclude by considering what our result suggests about the relationship between i-desire and propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)

The cosmic perspective (or view sub specie aeternitatis) is associated with concerns about the meaning of life, our significance in the universe, and the universe’s indifference. I suggest that there is another important and common, albeit tacit, concern related to the cosmic view. Adopting the cosmic view can justifiably bring about a sense of disconnection from one’s life. Moreover, many of the explicit concerns we have regarding the cosmic view are issues that have a rational bearing upon this sense of (...) disconnection. As I argue, issues concerning our normative reasons (viewed from the cosmic perspective), our cosmic significance, and the universe’s vastness and indifference all warrant a sense of disconnectedness from our lives. At least, such disconnection is warranted for the duration of our attentive engagement with the cosmic view. But in small enough doses, this can be a good thing. The cosmic view and the sense of disconnection it brings about can foster experiences of awe. Awe, in turn, can promote a greater feeling of connection to the world around us and make us, as Bertrand Russell (1935/1973) would put it, less ‘trivial’ and ‘arrogant.’. (shrink)

A. John Simmons is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and creative of today's political philosophers. His work on political obligation is regarded as definitive and he is also internationally respected as an interpreter of John Locke. The characteristic features of clear argumentation and careful scholarship that have been hallmarks of his philosophy are everywhere evident in this collection. The essays focus on the problems of political obligation and state legitimacy as well as on historical theories of (...) property and justice. Cumulatively the collection presents a distinctive social and political philosophy, exploring the nature of our most fundamental rights and obligations, and displaying the power and plausibility of Lockean ideal theory. (shrink)

Most states in the United States have conscience laws protecting conscientious refusal to perform some medical service. Yet many state conscience laws protect providers from being even indirectly involved with some procedure they find objectionable, which can include not only referrals but also simply informing patients of medically indicated but morally contentious options. I argue that such policies are unjust, offering too much protection for integrity in the face of competing values and patient interests. In other words, these policies grant (...) too much weight to integrity. One promising response to this concern is that in addition to integrity, the state should protect professionals so that they avoid complicity that could undermine their moral right to hold others accountable. I argue that this response fails, since it is implausible that these professionals actually lose that right in such contexts. I conclude that these policies should be restricted to better protect patient interests. (shrink)

Existential happiness is happiness that one has a basic life at all. Having a basic life, as I understand it, involves being the subject of experiences and being an agent in some minimal sense. As I argue, existential happiness is a fitting response to having a basic life. To make this argument, I look at two possible accounts of the fittingness of existential happiness: the value of a basic life and attachment to the constitutive elements of one’s life. I also (...) consider a few possible sources of existential happiness, including encounters with death, counterfactual thinking, and hedonically positive feelings of awe directed toward one’s own consciousness. (shrink)

The current literature on norms of inquiry features two families of norms: norms that focus on an inquirer’s ignorance and norms that focus on the question’s soundness. I argue that, given a factive conception of ignorance, it’s possible to derive a soundness-style norm from a version of the ignorance norm. A crucial lemma in the argument is that just as one can only be ignorant of a proposition if the proposition is true, so one can only be ignorant with respect (...) to a question if the question is sound. (shrink)

Many philosophers and Effective Altruist researchers have argued that the overall welfare of wild fish is negative. Since there are more fish than any other kind of wild vertebrate on earth (even when taken together), the view that suffering is predominate among wild fish is a key part of their larger suggestion that the overall welfare of wild vertebrates is negative, a view I’ll call ‘wildlife pessimism.’ Correspondingly, undermining the wildlife pessimist’s view might largely be accomplished simply by taking a (...) closer look at their arguments concerning fish. Focusing on fish alone will allow for a greater depth of empirical analysis than has hitherto been possible in the wildlife welfare debate, which usually features attempts to discuss all wild animals at once. As I will show, wildlife optimism is at least as likely as wildlife pessimism. That is, it seems just as plausible that wild fish have a welfare level that is neutral or positive overall. (shrink)

In the following paper I develop an account of Gilles Deleuze’s ethics through his work on Spinoza, which he contrasts with morality, to argue that an ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic should resist the moralizing of the New Normal and instead have an immanent focus on what is happening to us. In the first part of the paper I detail the novel approach to ethics as ethology that Deleuze works out most explicitly in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. In the second (...) part I show exactly how Deleuze contrasts ethics from morality and moral thinking before showing the relation of ethics to morality in relation to the New Normal and contrast the Deleuzian ethical perspective from other ethical philosophical accounts that I claim are indicative a moral approach to the New Normal. I conclude by arguing that the prevalence of the New Normal amidst COVID-19 represents a triumph of what Spinoza calls the sad passions and suggest Deleuze’s ethics might be a way to reject those sad passions. (shrink)

In this article, an ecological ethic is developed from the ethical philosophy and environmental phenomenology of the Japanese ethicist Watsuji Tetsurō. More specially, it is illustrated that reading Watsuji’s ethics and concept of fūdo (風土) in tangent and drawing out the implications of his ontology of emptiness, provides the means to overcome the ecological issue of anthropocentrism. The ecological ethic developed here also goes beyond Watsuji’s account by criticising his focus on land and advocates the importance of the sea for (...) environmental ethics. Not only is it argued that a fully functional ecological ethic must account for all habitats, but that the sea can be seen to be more fundamental than the land in the formation of Watsuji’s concept of fūdo. (shrink)

Despite recent controversies surrounding the principle that knowledge entails truth (KT), this paper aims to prove that the principle is true. It offers a proof of (KT) in the following sense. It advances a deductively valid argument for (KT), whose premises are, by most lights, obviously true. Moreover, each premise is buttressed by at least two supporting arguments. And finally, all premises and supporting arguments can be rationally accepted by people who don’t already accept (KT).

‘Rights and Territories: A Reply to Nine, Miller, and Stilz’ defends the Lockean theory of states’ territorial rights (as this theory was presented in Boundaries of Authority) against the critiques of Nine, Miller, and Stilz. In response to Nine’s concern that such a Lockean theory cannot justify the right of legitimate states to exclude aliens, it is argued that a consent-based theory like the Lockean one is flexible enough to justify a wide range of possible incidents of territorial rights – (...) importantly including, though not necessarily including, the sort of right to exclude aliens that is familiar from actual political practice. Miller’s criticisms are more wide-ranging. In response, the article argues that Lockean labor-based property rights are both stronger and more enduring than Miller suggests and that nationalism’s resources for dealing with concerns about rights-supersession and trapped minorities are importantly overstated by Miller. Against Stilz’s Kantian, ‘presentist’ account of states’ authority over persons and territories, it is argued that the rectification of past (historical) wrongs remains morally crucial even in the context of otherwise-just societies and that Stilz’s Kantian/rawlsian position unconvincingly privileges the rights to autonomy of territorially concentrated groups over those of dissenting individuals or wrongfully dispersed groups. (shrink)

This book aims to provide a solution to the semantic paradoxes. It argues for a unified solution to the paradoxes generated by our concepts of denotation, predicate extension, and truth. The solution makes two main claims. The first is that our semantic expressions 'denotes', 'extension' and 'true' are context-sensitive. The second, inspired by a brief, tantalizing remark of Godel's, is that these expressions are significant everywhere except for certain singularities, in analogy with division by zero. A formal theory of singularities (...) is presented and applied to a wide variety of versions of the definability paradoxes, Russell's paradox, and the Liar paradox. Keith Simmons argues that the singularity theory satisfies the following desiderata: it recognizes that the proper setting of the semantic paradoxes is natural language, not regimented formal languages; it minimizes any revision to our semantic concepts; it respects as far as possible Tarski's intuition that natural languages are universal; it responds adequately to the threat of revenge paradoxes; and it preserves classical logic and semantics. Simmons draws out the consequences of the singularity theory for deflationary views of our semantic concepts, and concludes that if we accept the singularity theory, we must reject deflationism. (shrink)

The most recent addition to the Fundamentals of Philosophy Series, Political Philosophy is a concise yet thorough and highly engaging introduction to the essential problems of the discipline. Organized topically and presented in a straightforward manner by an eminent political philosopher, A. John Simmons, it investigates the nature and basis of political authority and the structure and organization of political life. Each chapter focuses on a central problem, considers how it could be addressed, and outlines the various philosophical positions (...) surrounding it. Covering both historical and contemporary work, this unique text offers a survey of major concepts and debates while also reflecting the author's views and contributions. Accessible to novices yet also useful for advanced students, Political Philosophy presents a unified and accessible portrait of the issues that have been puzzling political philosophers for years. (shrink)