This study investigates the dynamics of brick-and-mortar versus click-and-mortar microbusinesses, focusing on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) within the local context of Balayan. Ten purposively sampled microbusiness entrepreneurs were examined using the SWOT method. The findings underscore the significance of product assessment, communication, and customer experiences in cultivating trust. Sensory experiences and competitive pricing emerge as strengths, while challenges such as poor sales necessitate strategic interventions. External factors, particularly technological advancements, exert influence on the retail landscape. Key (...) strategies include competitive pricing, flexibility, and an understanding of customer behavior. The study highlights growth potential in tailored experiences but acknowledges the risks posed by e-commerce competition. Additionally, a SWOT strategic plan is developed to leverage internal and external strengths and opportunities while mitigating weaknesses and threats. (shrink)

This chapter sharpens the book’s criticism of exclusivist responsible to religious multiplicity, firstly through close critical attention to arguments which religious exclusivists provide, and secondly through the introduction of several new, formal arguments / dilemmas. Self-described ‘post-liberals’ like Paul Griffiths bid philosophers to accept exclusivist attitudes and beliefs as just one among other aspects of religious identity. They bid us to normalize the discourse Griffiths refers to as “polemical apologetics,” and to view its acceptance as the only viable form of (...) pluralism. This reasoning may seem initially plausible, but on closer examination his and other’s defence of the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity fall apart. Informed by our study of luck-leaning theological explanations of religious difference and the counter-inductive thinking they exemplify, I argue that exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are best explained by personal and group bias, and that a discourse between exclusivist authors or sects is beyond the pale of reasonable disagreement. Our study of descriptive (psychological) and prescriptive (religious) fideism in the first sections of Chapter Five suggests that we turn back to formal features of doxastic methods (i.e., of how people process), features that may be straightforwardly tested for in studies utilizing scales of religious orientation. These formal features allow us to better recognize not only the multiplicity of models of faith that religious adherents adhere to, but also that the relationship between forms of fideism is scalar: there is a spectrum of views running from rationalism to fideism, and at the fideistic end from moderate to strong forms of religious fideism. I further explain why developing tests and markers for a high degree of fideistic orientation is important to all those who study religion. The second half of the chapter turns to criticism or censure of exclusivist attitudes to religious multiplicity, in contrast to apologetic defenses of exclusivism. While we have examined the close connections between fideism and fundamentalism, and again between fundamentalism and exclusivism in earlier chapters, a sharper focus reveals an important but little-recognized distinction reflected in the literature: the distinction between religion-specific (or particularist) and mutualist exclusivism. The mutualist doesn’t talk just about the right of adherents of one specific religion to assert exclusivism, but the adherents of any and all “home” religions. I argue that some previously unrecognized problems for the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are brought to light when we make the distinction between the two basic ways to understand the claim that exclusivists are making. I put particularist (Barth, Lindbeck, Plantinga) and mutualist (Griffiths, Gellman, Margalit, D’Costa) defenses of exclusivism on the horns of a dilemma, and argue that despite the popularity it presently enjoys among post-liberal theologians, a close examination reveals that the very conceptual coherence of mutualist exclusivism is in serious doubt. (shrink)

This paper defends two main claims. First, that political philosophy deserves a central place in AI Ethics’ curricula. This is a claim about the content of the AI Ethics class. The second claim is about the form of the AI Ethics class: namely, that considerations originating in political philosophy must inform the way in which AI Ethics is taught. The basic idea animating both claims, is that AI has powerful political implications and that preparing students to navigate these implications requires (...) paying close attention to both the cognitive and practical learning goals of the AI Ethics course. (shrink)

This article argues that we ought to reject Gregory Currie’s “Trace Account” of documentary film. According to the Trace Account, a film is a documentary so long the majority of its constitutive images are traces of the film’s subject matter. The argument proceeds by considering how proponents of the Trace Account could respond to Noel Carroll’s charge that their analysis is radically revisionary. I argue that the only responses available are either implausible or show that a fully worked out version (...) of the Trace Account collapses into Carroll’s own, rival definition of documentary. I then consider how advocates of the Trace Account might attempt to rescue the theory by reframing it as an account of a genre or as a theory of evaluation and argue that neither attempt would succeed. Given this, we ought to embrace Carroll’s own account of documentary, according to which a film is documentary if and only if it is a film of presumptive assertion. (shrink)

Discussion of partial grounds that aren't parts of full grounds; definition of full grounding in terms of partial grounding.

Ian Rumfitt has argued that rational adjudication against classical logic in quantum mechanics is not only unnecessary, but impossible as well. This paper explains why his argument fails.

Practical wisdom is the intellectual virtue that enables a person to make reliably good decisions about how, all-things-considered, to live. As such, it is a lofty and important ideal to strive for. It is precisely this loftiness and importance that gives rise to important questions about wisdom: Can real people develop it? If so, how? What is the nature of wisdom as it manifests itself in real people? I argue that we can make headway answering these questions by modeling wisdom (...) on expert skill. Presenting the main argument for this expert skill model of wisdom is the focus of this paper. More specifically, I’ll argue that wisdom is primarily the same kind of epistemic achievement as expert decision-making skill in areas such as firefighting. Acknowledging this helps us see that, and how, real people can develop wisdom. It also helps to resolve philosophical debates about the nature of wisdom. For example, philosophers, including those who think virtue should be modeled on skills, disagree about the extent to which wise people make decisions using intuitions or principled deliberation and reflection. The expert skill model resolves this debate by showing that wisdom includes substantial intuitive and deliberative and reflective abilities. (shrink)

Given the fact that many people use Wikipedia, we should ask: Can we trust it? The empirical evidence suggests that Wikipedia articles are sometimes quite good but that they vary a great deal. As such, it is wrong to ask for a monolithic verdict on Wikipedia. Interacting with Wikipedia involves assessing where it is likely to be reliable and where not. I identify five strategies that we use to assess claims from other sources and argue that, to a greater of (...) lesser degree, Wikipedia frustrates all of them. Interacting responsibly with something like Wikipedia requires new epistemic methods and strategies. (shrink)

This essay joins Wilhelm Dilthey’s conception of the metaphysical impulse as a flight from the tragedy of human finitude with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of how language bewitches intelligence. We contend that there are features of the phenomenology of language that play a constitutive and pervasive role in the formation of metaphysical illusion.

The article proceeds upon the assumption that the beliefs and degrees of belief of rational agents satisfy a number of constraints, including: consistency and deductive closure for belief sets, conformity to the axioms of probability for degrees of belief, and the Lockean Thesis concerning the relationship between belief and degree of belief. Assuming that the beliefs and degrees of belief of both individuals and collectives satisfy the preceding three constraints, I discuss what further constraints may be imposed on the aggregation (...) of beliefs and degrees of belief. Some possibility and impossibility results are presented. The possibility results suggest that the three proposed rationality constraints are compatible with reasonable aggregation procedures for belief and degree of belief. (shrink)

A new form of skepticism is described, which holds that objectivity and understanding are incompossible ideals of modern science. This is attributed to Weyl, hence its name: Weylean skepticism. Two general defeat strategies are then proposed, one of which is rejected.

Spinoza's use of the phrase “sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power [sub (...) potestate] of the state (TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful. (shrink)

This unpublished paper, written in 2005 in the PhD philosophy program at Notre Dame, argues that algebraic structural realism faces a potentially fatal difficulty raised by the existence of inequivalent representations in quantum field theory.

The psychiatric diagnostic system, as exemplified by the DSM, is a pseudo-scientific framework for diagnosing sick Cartesian isolated minds. As such, it completely overlooks the exquisite context sensitivity and radical context dependence of human emotional life and of all forms of emotional disturbance. In Descartes’s vision, the mind is a “thinking thing,” ontologically decontextualized, fundamentally separated from its world. Heidegger’s existential phenomenology mended this Cartesian subject-object split, unveiling our Being as always already contextualized, a Being-in-the-world. Here I offer a critique (...) of studies in “phenomenological psychopathology” that presuppose the validity of the psychiatric diagnostic system and leave it unchallenged. In this vein, I contend that all emotional disturbances are constituted in an indissoluble context of human interrelatedness. Specifically, I claim that all emotional disturbances, including those objectified by the DSM, take form in relational contexts of severe emotional trauma. There are no psychiatric entities, only devastating contexts. Additionally, I show that Heidegger’s analyses of Angst, world-collapse, uncanniness, and thrownness into Being-toward-death provide extraordinary philosophical tools for grasping the existential significance of such contexts of emotional trauma. Applying Heidegger’s concept of authenticity, I suggest that emotional health entails an ease of passage—i.e., an absence of dissociation—between the world of trauma and the world of everydayness. (shrink)

This essay develops the thesis that the essence of psychoanalysis lies in emotional phenomenology.

This book demonstrates how the authors have experienced the power of phenomenology in their therapeutic work with patients, especially those struggling with horrific trauma; in their encounters with psychological and philosophical theories; and in their efforts to comprehend destructive ideologies and the collective traumas that give rise to them. The Power of Phenomenology presents the trajectory of this work. Each chapter begins with a contribution written by one or both authors, extending the power of phenomenological inquiry to one or more (...) of these diverse contexts. The contributions are followed, one or two at a time, by a dialogue between the authors, illustrating the dialectical process of their long collaboration. The unusual format seeks to bring the phenomenology of their collaborative efforts to life for the reader. (shrink)

For more than four decades, George Atwood and I have been absorbed in rethinking psychoanalysis as a form of phenomenological inquiry. In the course of this work, I repeatedly made the claim that phenomenology led us inexorably to relationality, but until now I did not offer an explanation of this inexorability. In this article, I show that emotional phenomenology and relationality always already form an indissoluble unity, because relationality is constitutive of emotional experience.

FDE is a logic that captures relevant entailment between implication-free formulae and admits of an intuitive informational interpretation as a 4-valued logic in which “a computer should think”. However, the logic is co-NP complete, and so an idealized model of how an agent can think. We address this issue by shifting to signed formulae where the signs express imprecise values associated with two distinct bipartitions of the set of standard 4 values. Thus, we present a proof system which consists of (...) linear operational rules and only two branching structural rules, the latter expressing a generalized rule of bivalence. This system naturally leads to defining an infinite hierarchy of tractable depth-bounded approximations to FDE. Namely, approximations in which the number of nested applications of the two branching rules is bounded. (shrink)

When faced with the complexity of an intersubjective system, in which one is oneself implicated, an epistemic humility that recognizes and respects the finitude of knowing is essential.

In the present essay we explore a form of linguistic witchery (Wittgenstein) aimed at forging a sense of unity from incompatible visions of reality—namely, the formation of oxymoronic hybrids.

The author develops the claim that humans characteristically maintain a sense of protectedness by creating various forms of metaphysical illusion, replacing the tragic finitude and transience of human existence with a permanent and eternally changeless reality. One such illusion forms around planet earth itself, transformed into an indestructible metaphysical entity. It has become increasingly difficult, in the face of the ravages of climate change, to maintain the illusion of earth’s indestructibility, and with it, a sense of safety. The author refers (...) to the feelings evoked by the crumbling of metaphysical illusion as Apocalyptic anxiety¬—the dread of the end of human civilization. This Apocalyptic dread needs to be confronted (not evaded) in a comportment of dwelling—with our vulnerable planet and with our vulnerable fellow human beings. (shrink)

After noting how academic philosophers have shunned psychobiography, the author brings to focus the psychobiographical sources of Martin Heidegger's "turn" from a hermeneutic phenomenology to a form of metaphysical mysticism.

The paper sketches an argument against modal monism, more specifically against the reduction of physical possibility to metaphysical possibility. The argument is based on semantic aspects of non-distributive quantum logic.

This article examines the relationship between totalitarianism and the metaphysical illusions on which it rests. Phenomenological investigation is claimed to loosen the grip of totalitarian ideology by exposing its origins in the “resurrective” illusions that seek to overcome the impact of collective trauma. Phenomenology is thus shown to have emancipatory power.

Scharff’s study of Heidegger’s earlier lectures and their debt to Dilthey’s phenomenology allow one to recognize the Diltheyan influences that pervade Being and Time, undistracted by Husserl’s super-Cartesianism.

The as-structure provided by language, even in the sciences, is always constitutive of experience and never merely designative. “From Saying…it comes to pass that the World is made to appear” (Heidegger 1971 [1957]: 101).

De Mul’s central thesis is that Dilthey’s Critique of Historical Reason can be understood as a radicalization of Kant’s recognition of the contingency and finitude of human reason.

This paper argues that whereas Mach understood thought economy as a principle of practical rationality, Husserl rejected it as a principle of theoretical rationality. The distinction is further supported by their correspondingly different readings of the principle of permanence.

This essay is devoted to the study of useful ways of thinking about the nature of interpretation, with particular attention being given to the so called normative character of mental explanation. My aim of illuminating the nature of interpretation will be accomplished by examining several views, some of which are common to both Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, concerning its unique characteristics as a method of prediction and explanation. Moreover, some of the views held by Davidson and Dennett will be (...) adopted, elaborated, and defended. The conclusions of these philosophers do not, however, form an acceptable whole. Thus I will attempt to moderate some of their views. In particular, I will attempt to show up the deficits of Davidson's view of the mental by defending the possibility some sort of psycho-physical reduction. Despite such philosophical pretensions, major parts of this essay will be devoted to sketching the foundations of a method for the interpretation of intentional behaviour which I take to embody the key features of our ordinary practice of interpretation. In particular, I will attempt to sketch the bases for a method of interpretation which is sensitive to the methodological considerations associated with the seemingly unique normative character of mental explanation. To this end, I will also investigate the question of how certain formal measures of coherence can be made to yield models for understanding the actual and possible bases of interpretation. (shrink)

Ang kakayahan ng mga mag-aaral sa paggamit ng wikang Filipino ay nararapat lamang na malinang nang lubusan ng mga tagapagturong may sapat na kasanayan. Ang pag-aaral na ito ay gumamit ng pagsusuring palarawan, upang malinaw na makita ang saloobin ng mga mag-aaral sa paggamit ng Filipino sa paraan na pagpapahayag ng kanilang saloobin. Nilayon ng pag-aaral na ito na malaman ang saloobin ng mga mag-aaral hinggil sa paggamit ng Filipino sa mga piling asignatura ng GEC (General Education Subject) kabilang dito (...) ang GEC 5 (Purposive Communication), GEC 2 (Readings in Philippine History), GEC 1 (Understanding The Self) at GEM 14 (The Life and Works of Rizal). Sinusuri rin dito ang mga uri ng pag-uulat, mga sulatin at proyekto sa naging negatibong saloobin ng mga mag-aaral sa paggamit ng wikang Filipino. At bilang midyum sa mga piling asignatura, 33 o 27.50% ng mga mag-aaral ay may negatibong tugon samantalang (87 o 72.50%) karamihan ay nagsabi na kailangan, mahalaga, nakatutulong, madaling gamitin, at gamitin pa sa ibang asignatura. Ang mga respondent ay napatunayan na batid nila na ang paggamit ng Filipino ay isa sa mga wikang panturo sa mga piling asignatura sa antas tersarya at ang walang pagkakaibang saloobin ng mga mag-aaral sa paggamit ng Filipino ay nagpapakita ng kanilang positibong pagtanggap sa Filipino ay kinakailangan sa kanilang pagkatuto. Batay sa kinalabasan ng pag-aaral, ang mga mag-aaral ay kailangang mabigyan ng mga kaukulang gawain kaugnay sa wika upang mapahalagahan ang kanilang saloobin at lalong magamit ang wikang Filipino bilang unang wika sa paraang pasulat at pasalita. (shrink)

Despite considerable growth in understanding of various aspects of sporting and exercise embodiment over the last decade, in-depth investigations of embodied affectual experiences in running remain limited. Furthermore, within the corpus of literature investigating pleasure and the hedonic dimension in running, much of this research has focused on experiences of pleasure in relation to performance and achievement, or on specific affective states, such as enjoyment, derived after completing a run. We directly address this gap in the qualitative literature on sporting (...) and exercise embodiment by contributing novel insights on the mind-body pleasures of running via focusing analytic attention towards the pleasures recalled by runners as experienced during positive, rewarding running experiences. Applying conceptual insights drawn from sociological phenomenology, we analyse data from an in-depth, event-focused interview study with distance runners who reported positive, rewarding experiences in recent recreational runs. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we present findings in relation to three themes: (1) ‘running feels like it should’; (2) sensory engagements; and (3) time out. The study contributes fresh perspectives, both conceptually and in relation to data-collection approach, to a small literature on the lived experience of pleasure in sport, exercise and physical cultures. (shrink)

Der moralische Kontraktualismus scheint als Konzeption einer nicht-konsequentialistischen intergenerationellen Ethik sehr vielversprechend. Eine zentrale theoretische Herausforderung stellt jedoch das Nichtidentitätsproblem dar. Spezifisch ist zu klären, ob zukünftige Personen einen Einwand gegen die Prinzipien unseres Handelns haben, wenn unser Handeln negative Folgen für die Lebensqualität zukünftiger Personen hat, die Existenz der konkreten Personen aber von diesem Handeln abhängt und ihr Leben für sie insgesamt lebenswert ist. Eine prominente Antwort besteht darin, die Einwände zukünftiger Personen “nicht-komparativ” zu verstehen. Ihr Einwand bestehe also (...) nicht darin, dass sie durch unser Handeln schlechter gestellt werden, als sie es andernfalls wären, sondern darin, dass sie dadurch in relevanter Form schlecht dastehen. Es ist bislang unklar, wie genau eine solche Position im Rahmen des moralischen Kontraktualismus aussehen könnte, ob sie eine Lösung des Nichtidentitätsproblems darstellt und ob ihre substanziellen Implikationen überzeugen. Dieser Beitrag prüft daher kritisch die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines nicht-komparativen kontraktualistischen Ansatzes. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass nicht-komparative Einwände mit Bezug auf das Wohlergehen der zukünftigen Personen nicht plausibel sind, solange ihr Leben nicht überwiegend schlecht für sie ist. Der hier diskutierte Ansatz kann für den moralischen Kontraktualismus also höchstens eine Teilantwort auf das Nichtidentitätsproblem darstellen. (shrink)

Recent iterations of Alvin Plantinga’s “evolutionary argument against naturalism” bear a surprising resemblance to a famous argument in Descartes’s Third Meditation. Both arguments conclude that theists have an epistemic advantage over atheists/naturalists vis-à-vis the question whether or not our cognitive faculties are reliable. In this paper, I show how these arguments bear an even deeper resemblance to each other. After bringing the problem of evil to bear negatively on Descartes’s argument, I argue that, given these similarities, atheists can wield a (...) recent solution to the problem of evil against theism in much the way Plantinga wields the detailsof evolutionary theory against naturalism. I conclude that Plantinga and Descartes give us insufficient reason for thinking theists are in a better epistemic position than atheists and naturalists vis-à-vis the question whether or not our cognitive faculties are reliable. (shrink)

Online education will be paired by developing intelligent systems that can provide personalization to the learner. To that extent ,this paper is proposing the design for an Online Personalized Learning Remediation/Tutoring Tool to help learners find the most suitable teachers for certain topics. The tool relies on a dataset of teacher profiles, comprising the subjects taught, video links, ratings, and experience, so that using machine learning techniques, it could recommend top educators. Applying feature extraction using CountVectorizer and recommendation based on (...) cosine similarity, it will ensure the robust and personalized search experience to the learners. The tool will augment the process of learning by not wasting time of the learner searching for an appropriate teacher and provides an uninterrupted user experience through an easy-to-understand web interface. This system increases the satisfaction of learners along with optimizing their ability to engage with the relevant teachers effectively. (shrink)

This is the first chapter to our edited collection of essays on the nature and ethics of blame. In this chapter we introduce the reader to contemporary discussions about blame and its relationship to other issues (e.g. free will and moral responsibility), and we situate the essays in this volume with respect to those discussions.

Deductive inference is usually regarded as being “tautological” or “analytical”: the information conveyed by the conclusion is contained in the information conveyed by the premises. This idea, however, clashes with the undecidability of first-order logic and with the (likely) intractability of Boolean logic. In this article, we address the problem both from the semantic and the proof-theoretical point of view. We propose a hierarchy of propositional logics that are all tractable (i.e. decidable in polynomial time), although by means of growing (...) computational resources, and converge towards classical propositional logic. The underlying claim is that this hierarchy can be used to represent increasing levels of “depth” or “informativeness” of Boolean reasoning. Special attention is paid to the most basic logic in this hierarchy, the pure “intelim logic”, which satisfies all the requirements of a natural deduction system (allowing both introduction and elimination rules for each logical operator) while admitting of a feasible (quadratic) decision procedure. We argue that this logic is “analytic” in a particularly strict sense, in that it rules out any use of “virtual information”, which is chiefly responsible for the combinatorial explosion of standard classical systems. As a result, analyticity and tractability are reconciled and growing degrees of computational complexity are associated with the depth at which the use of virtual information is allowed. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the ways in which entrepreneurships driven by industrial design and the strategies for interconnecting design for innovation are articulated. In the first instance, current practices are recognized in order to analyze the different processes that entrepreneurial dynamics go through. This analysis is carried out from a systemic perspective, at three levels of abstraction: designer, entrepreneurship and ecosystem. The theoretical and conceptual framework will be structured based on the innovations driven by design, which occur around the designer, (...) his personal projects, and the possible interactions and singularities offered by living spaces. The objective of this work is to unravel the eventual relationships of the entrepreneurial designer in the ecosystem and to highlight the potential added by emerging connections, which allow for the projection of synergistic actions with other actors to create value(s). In this way, other possible views of the entrepreneurial process are provided, where the cultural and philosophical dimension that characterizes industrial designers allows them to achieve a higher quality of life, designing and producing collectively (in) their environment. (shrink)

The problem of truth in fiction concerns how to tell whether a given proposition is true in a given fiction. Thus far, the nearly universal consensus has been that some propositions are ‘implicitly true’ in some fictions: such propositions are not expressed by any explicit statements in the relevant work, but are nevertheless held to be true in those works on the basis of some other set of criteria. I call this family of views ‘implicitism’. I argue that implicitism faces (...) serious problems, whereas the opposite view is much more plausible than has previously been thought. After mounting a limited defence of explicitism, I explore a difficult problem for the view and discuss some possible responses. (shrink)

Amodal completion is the representation of those parts of the perceived object that we get no sensory stimulation from. While amodal completion is rife and plays an essential role in all sense modalities, philosophical discussions of this phenomenon have almost entirely been limited to vision. The aim of this paper is to examine in what sense we can talk about amodal completion in olfaction. We distinguish three different senses of amodal completion – spatial, temporal and feature-based completion – and argue (...) that all three are present and play a significant role in olfaction. (shrink)

The paper looks at the semantics and ontology of dispositions in the light of recent work on the subject. Objections to the simple conditionals apparently entailed by disposition statements are met by replacing them with so-called 'reduction sentences' and some implications of this are explored. The usual distinction between categorical and dispositional properties is criticised and the relation between dispositions and their bases examined. Applying this discussion to two typical cases leads to the conclusion that fragility is not a real (...) property and that, while both temperature and its bases are, this does not generate any problem of overdetermination. (shrink)

Philosophers have rightly condemned lookism—that is, discrimination in favor of attractive people or against unattractive people—in education, the justice system, the workplace and elsewhere. Surprisingly, however, the almost universal preference for attractive romantic and sexual partners has rarely received serious ethical scrutiny. On its face, it’s unclear whether this is a form of discrimination we should reject or tolerate. I consider arguments for both views. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that preferring attractive partners is bad. (...) The idea is that choosing partners based on looks seems essentially similar to other objectionable forms of discrimination. (In particular, the preference for attractive partners is arguably both unfair and harmful to a significant degree.) One can try to resist this conclusion in several ways. I consider three possible replies. The first has to do with the possibility of controlling our partner preferences. The second pertains to attractiveness and “good genes”. The last attempts to link certain aspects of attractiveness to a prospective partner’s personality and values. I argue that the first two replies fail conclusively, while the third only amounts to a limited defense of a particular kind of attractiveness preference. So the idea that we should often avoid preferring attractive partners is compelling. (shrink)

Psychopaths routinely disregard social norms by engaging in selfish, antisocial, often violent behavior. Commonly characterized as mentally disordered, recent evidence suggests that psychopaths are executing a well-functioning, if unscrupulous strategy that historically increased reproductive success at the expense of others. Natural selection ought to have favored strategies that spared close kin from harm, however, because actions affecting the fitness of genetic relatives contribute to an individual’s inclusive fitness. Conversely, there is evidence that mental disorders can disrupt psychological mechanisms designed to (...) protect relatives. Thus, mental disorder and adaptation accounts of psychopathy generate opposing hypotheses: psychopathy should be associated with an increase in the victimization of kin in the former account but not in the latter. Contrary to the mental disorder hypothesis, we show here in a sample of 289 violent offenders that variation in psychopathy predicts a decrease in the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders; that is, psychopathy predicts an increased likelihood of harming non-relatives. Because nepotistic inhibition in violence may be caused by dispersal or kin discrimination, we examined the effects of psychopathy on (1) the dispersal of offenders and their kin and (2) sexual assault frequency (as a window on kin discrimination). Although psychopathy was negatively associated with coresidence with kin and positively associated with the commission of sexual assault, it remained negatively associated with the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders after removing cases of offenders who had coresided with kin and cases of sexual assault from the analyses. These results stand in contrast to models positing psychopathy as a pathology, and provide support for the hypothesis that psychopathy reflects an evolutionary strategy largely favoring the exploitation of non-relatives. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

Walter Wink is well-known for his exposition of what he has called “the third way” in Christian ethics, and his three-volume theological work expounding the nature of “the dominating powers that be” has left a lasting mark on Christian (post)liberalism -- not just in North America but elsewhere as well. However there is a vexing philosophical tension in Wink’s work, one that is even reflected in the fading of mainline Protestantism as a social force. This short piece was an early (...) effort to call attention to this challenge. (shrink)

Defense of an account of intrinsic properties in terms of (what is now called) grounding rather than naturalness.

Multidimensional adjectives are ubiquitous in natural language. An adjective F is multidimensional just in case whether F applies to an object or pair of objects depends on how those objects stand with respect to multiple underlying dimensions of F-ness. Developing a semantics for multidimensional adjectives requires us to address the problem of dimensional aggregation: how do the application conditions of an adjective F in its positive and comparative forms depend on its underlying dimensions? Here we develop a semantics for multidimensional (...) adjectives that incorporates aggregation functions. We then explore an analogy between dimensional aggregation and preference aggregation, bringing results from social choice theory to bear on the number and kind of aggregation functions that are admissible in a context. These results suggest that, for any given adjective, there will often be multiple aggregation functions admissible, meaning that multidimensional comparatives are often vague. (shrink)

Pain may appear to undermine the radically intentionalist view that the phenomenal character of any experience is entirely constituted by its representational content. That appearance is illusory. After categorizing versions of pain intentionalism along two dimensions, I argue that an 'objectivist' and 'non-mentalist' version is the most promising, if it can withstand two objections concerning what we say when in pain, and the distinctiveness of pain. I rebut these objections, in a way available to both opponents of and adherents to (...) the view that experiential content is entirely conceptual. (shrink)