What are the sensory individuals of audition? What are the entities our auditory system attributes properties to? We examine various proposals about the nature of the sensory individuals of audition, and show that while each can account for some aspects of auditory perception, each also faces certain difficulties. We then put forward a new conception of sensory individuals according to which auditory sensory individuals are composite individuals. A feature shared by all existing accounts of sounds and sources is that they (...) postulate sensory individuals that are non-composite. They identify the sensory individual of sound hearing or source hearing with one type of entity in the environment, be they sound waves, vibrations, or interactions. We question this assumption and argue that our perceptual systems represent two or more aspects of the environment as a single sensory individual. Finally, we show that taking auditory individuals to be composite sensory individuals allows for an account of audition that is less problematic than its existing alternatives. (shrink)

This essential reference text on the life, thought and writings of Plato uses over 160 short, accessible articles to cover a complete range of topics for both the first-time student and seasoned scholar of Plato and ancient philosophy. It is organized into five parts illuminating Plato’s life, the whole of the Dialogues attributed to him, the Dialogues’ literary features, the concepts and themes explored within them and Plato’s reception via his influence on subsequent philosophers and the various interpretations of his (...) work. This fully updated 2nd edition includes 19 newly commissioned entries on topics ranging across comedy, tragedy, Xenophon, metatheatre, gender, musical theory, animals, Orphism, political theory, religion, time, Hellenistic philosophy and post-Platonic ancient commentaries. It also features revisions to the majority of articles from the 1st edition, including 8 which have been completely re-written, and 12 which have had the references substantially revised. Reflecting the growing diversity of Plato scholarship across the world, this edition includes contributions from a wide range of scholars who enrich the field and provide students and scholars with a vital resource for study and reference. (shrink)

It is arguably the case that olfactory system contains two senses that share the same type of stimuli, sensory transduction mechanism, and processing centers. Yet, orthonasal and retronasal olfaction differ in their types of perceptible objects as individuated by their sensory qualities. What will be explored in this paper is how the account of orthonasal smell developed in the Molecular Structure Theory of smell can be expanded for retronasal olfaction (Young, 2016, 2019a-b, 2020). By considering the object of olfactory (...) perception to be the molecular structure of chemical compounds composing odor plumes, Molecular Structure Theory provides a means for determining an odor’s olfactory quality, how odors can be identified and individuated, and how we perceive smellscapes. Surveying the differences between orthonasal and retronasal olfaction provides the basis for the central argument of the paper that the perceptible objects we refer to as smells and individuated on the basis of their olfactory qualities are only relative to orthonasal olfaction. Retronasal olfaction it is speculatively concluded might play an essential role in our perception of flavorful objects. (shrink)

Agency is an amazing thing: it transduces cognitivity into causality, it makes thought real. How it does so has been a matter of considerable dispute, the resolution of which has been hampered by moral complications. The supposition of a rational basis for morality can play an essential role in clarifying agency by providing a ground for legitimizing the objects of desire and the motivation they provide. The four-stage model of agency presented here – deliberation, calculation, intention, and enactment – emerges (...) when the moral concerns regarding desire have been detoxified. A crucial distinction is between the cognitive and causal aspects of desire, between the estimation of desirability (preference) and the actual motivation it may initiate (desire). Failure to recognize desire’s cognitive aspect preemptively disables its participation in practical reasoning. (shrink)

Numerous scholars, philosophers, and experts in aesthetics have underscored the profound significance of a life enriched by the presence of beauty. Consequently, the appreciation of aesthetic experiences is considered pivotal for achieving self-discovery and self-transcendence (Howell et al. 2017). Despite theoretical prominence, limited qualitative research has been conducted on this topic. To address this gap in research, this study’s objective emphasized two questions guiding the inquiry; What is the role of aesthetic encounters in aiding self-realization or individuation? and, how do (...) these experiences foster self-transcendence? -/- A thematic analysis was performed on the online interviews conducted (N=25), and their results revealed seven themes pertaining to self-realization: a) Losing Yourself to Find Yourself; b) Relatability and Self-Reflection in Art; c) Identity as a Collection of Skills; d) Art as a Medium for Self-Expression and Acknowledgment; e) Aesthetic Genres and Taste as Identity; f) Belonging and Social Identity through Art; and g) Personal Interests and Choices in Artistic Consumption. Furthermore, seven themes for the second research question of self-transcendence were also discovered: a) Mother Nature’s Beauty; b) Intense, Passionate, and Overwhelming Experiences of Heightened Consciousness; c) Sacred Symbolism, Archetypal Imagery, and the Collective Unconscious; d) Collective Effervescence, Social Connection, and Shared Meaning; e) The ‘Profound’ Found in the Mundane; f) Feelings of Spiritual Elevation and Wellbeing; and g) Self-Referential Meaning-Making through Art. These findings evidenced the transformative potential of aesthetic experiences, shedding light on the facets of personal growth and meaning that individuals derive from such encounters. (shrink)

Our sense of smell pervasively influences our most common behaviors and daily experience, yet little is known about olfactory consciousness. Over the past decade and a half research in both the fields of Consciousness Studies and Olfaction has blossomed, however, olfactory consciousness has received little to no attention. The olfactory systems unique anatomy, functional organization, sensory processes, and perceptual experiences offers a fecund area for exploring all aspects of consciousness, as well as a external perspective for re-examining the assumptions of (...) contemporary theories of consciousness. It has even been suggested that the olfactory system may represent the minimal neuroanatomy that is required for conscious processing. Here, we seek contributions that should serve as the foundation for future research concerning consciousness using olfaction as a model. -/- Given the variegated nature of research on consciousness, we seek original papers including review articles, original research, and theoretical contributions concerning the nature of olfactory consciousness. The scope of the special edition widely incorporates olfaction as it relates to Consciousness, Awareness, Attention, Phenomenal- or Access-Consciousness, and Qualia. Research concerning olfaction and cross-modal integration as it relates to conscious experience is also welcome. -/- As the initial foray into this uncharted area of research, we welcome contributions from across all disciplines contributing to cognitive neuroscience, including neurobiology, neurology, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer sciences. It is our hope that this special edition will serve as the impetus for future interdisciplinary research on olfaction and consciousness. (shrink)

Sharon Street’s 2006 article “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” challenges the epistemological pretensions of the moral realist, of the nonnaturalist in particular. Given that “Evolutionary forces have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes” – why should one suppose such attitudes and concomitant beliefs would track an independent moral reality? Especially since, on a nonnaturalist view, moral truth is causally inert. I abstract a logical skeleton of Street’s argument and, with its aid, (...) focus on problematic assumptions regarding the (a)causality of moral truth. It emerges that there are acquired causal powers that compensate for the intrinsic impotence of moral truth, as well as two distinct levels at which truth-tracking might occur. I argue that while evolution’s selective forces do not track moral truth, that does not imply individual organisms could not have evolved that capability. -/- . (shrink)

The question “Why should I be moral?” has long haunted normative ethics. How one answers it depends critically upon one’s understanding of morality, self-interest, and the relation between them. Stephen Finlay, in “Too Much Morality”, challenges the conventional interpretation of morality in terms of mutual fellowship, offering instead the “radical” view that it demands complete altruistic self-abnegation: the abandonment of one’s own interests in favor of those of any “anonymous” other. He ameliorates this with the proviso that there is no (...) rational basis for morality’s presumption of precedence, leaving it up to each person to decide when and whether they prefer self-interested concerns to more stringent moral requirements. I counter Finlay’s radical altruism with fair egalitarianism, a more congenial interpretation of moral normativity that repudiates self-abnegation and holds instead that ceteris paribus everybody’s interests are equal. As a result, supererogation and moral sainthood become more intelligible, and the choice between self-interest and morality becomes one between different decision procedures, the particular advantage of morality being others compatible results. (shrink)

There are Humeans and unHumeans, disagreeing as to the validity of the Treatise’s ideas regarding practical reason, but not as to their importance. The basic argument here is that the enduring irresolution of their Hume centric debates has been fostered by what can be called the fallacy of normative monism, i.e. a failure to distinguish between two different kinds of normativity: empirical vs. rational. Humeans take the empirical normativity of personal desire to constitute the only real kind, while unHumeans insist (...) that only the objective rationality associated with categorical morality can provide reliable normative guidance. In turn, the failure to recognize the dual nature of normativity has helped engender motivational obscurantism: as essentially causal notions, motive and motivation obscure the rational processes that lie at the heart of deliberation and choice. Once it is realized that normativity takes two different forms, each with its own distinctive role, it becomes possible to mediate if not mitigate the differences between Humeans and unHumeans. Choice will be the key to understanding practical reasoning, and its analysis will provide the basis for a belief/desire model that upends conventional wisdom regarding motivation and desire. (shrink)

It is natural to oppose morality and self-interest; it is customary also to oppose morality to interests as such, an inclination encouraged by Kantian tradition. However, if “interest” is understood simply as what moves a person to do this rather than that, then – if persons ever actually are good and do what is right – there must be moral interests. Bradley, in posing the “Why should I be moral?” question, raises Kant-inspired objections to the possibility of moral interests qua (...) particular, conditional causes. The paper argues that these objections can be met if (a) one distinguishes between what makes something right and what makes something right happen, and (b) doing what is right is intrinsic to a person’s interests and not merely a means to ulterior ends. The requisite completeness of rational morality is shown to exclude pluralistic approaches. Given rational monism, people can find intrinsic advantage in morality’s justifiability, cooperativeness and communality. (shrink)

It is generally supposed that borderline cases account for the tolerance of vague terms, yet cannot themselves be sharply bounded, leading to infinite levels of higher order vagueness. This higher order vagueness subverts any formal effort to make language precise. However, it is possible to show that tolerance must diminish at higher orders. The attempt to derive it from indiscriminability founders on a simple empirical test, and we learn instead that there is no limit to how small higher order tolerance (...) may become. That means there is no limit to how precisely we may draw the boundaries of borderline cases, thus forestalling any requirement for higher order vagueness. (shrink)

The realist belief in robustly attitude-independent evaluative truths – more specifically, moral truths – is challenged by Sharon Street’s essay “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value”. We know the content of human normative beliefs and attitudes has been profoundly influenced by a Darwinian natural selection process that favors adaptivity. But if simple adaptivity can explain the content of our evaluative beliefs, any connection they might have with abstract moral truth would seem to be purely coincidental. She continues the (...) skeptical attack in “Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Rethink It”, concentrating on the intuitionist realism of Ronald Dworkin. The latter sees the issue fundamentally as a holistic choice between moral objectivity and the genocide-countenancing consequences of abandoning objective standards. Street counters that, because of realism’s skeptical difficulties, Dworkin’s Choice (as I call it) actually works in favor of her Euthyphronic antirealism. I will argue that she misrepresents the realist’s skeptical challenge, and that clarifying the character of that challenge renders the case for normative realism much more appealing. Indeed, I claim that Street fails to exclude the genuine possibility of a rational basis for moral truth. (shrink)

These reflections are an attempt to get to the heart of the "reason is the slave of the passions" debate. The whole point of deliberation is to arrive at a choice. What factors persons find to be choice-relevant is a purely empirical matter. This has significant consequences for the views of Hume, Williams, Nagel, Parfit and Korsgaard regarding practical reason.

The argument that follows has a certain air of prestidigitation about it. I attempt to show that, given a couple of innocent-seeming suppositions, it is possible to derive a positive and complete theory of normative ethics from the Humean maxim "You can't get ought from is." This seems, of course, absurd. If the reasoning isn't completely unhinged, you may be sure, the trick has to lie in those "innocent-seeming" props. And, in fact, you are right. But every argument has to (...) begin somewhere, and, however questionable, those suppositions just don't seem to harbor serious normative import. (shrink)

Water is a finite resource held in common by the community yet coveted by individuals and special interests. The water management field is filled with disputes about water allocation, rights, and pollution. Environmental ethics is a basis for equitable water policy making in Delaware. The resource allocation dilemma is examined in relation to conflicting objectives imposed by a market economy between individual self-interests and community environmental well being. Two forms of water law are practiced in the USA—eastern riparianrights and western (...) prior appropriation. Both forms seek an ethical balance to resolve conflicts and protect individual water rights while protecting downstream users (the common good). Delaware Valley case studies discuss how environmental ethics can help the water policy specialist make difficult decisions during conflicts. Surveys polls indicate that 81 percent have values supportive of a balance between the economy and environment, or pro-environment, indicating that an environmental ethic is central to decisions concerning water policy. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions do not always clearly distinguish two different forms of vagueness. Sometimes focus is on the imprecision of predicates, and sometimes the indefiniteness of statements. The two are intimately related, of course. A predicate is imprecise if there are instances to which it neither definitely applies nor definitely does not apply, instances of which it is neither definitely true nor definitely false. However, indefinite statements will occur in everyday discourse only if speakers in fact apply imprecise predicates to such (...) indefinite instances. (What makes an instance indefinite is, it should be clear, predicate-relative.) The basic issue in the present inquiry is whether this indefiniteness ever really occurs; the basic question is, Why should it ever occur? (shrink)

Is 'vague' vague? Is the meaning of 'true' vague? Is higher-order vagueness unavoidable? Is it possible to say precisely what it is to say something precisely? These questions, deeply interrelated and of fundamental importance to logic and semantics, have been addressed recently by Achille Varzi in articles focused on an ingenius attempt by Roy Sorensen ("An Argument for the Vagueness of 'Vague'") to demonstrate that 'vague' is vague.

Theories of self-defence tend to invest heavily in ‘liability justifications’: if the Attacker is liable to have defensive violence deployed against him by the Defender, then he will not be wronged by such violence, and selfdefence becomes, as a result, morally unproblematic. This paper contends that liability justifications are overrated. The deeper contribution to an explanation of why defensive permissions exist is made by the Defender’s non-liability. Drawing on both canonical cases of self-defence, featuring Culpable Attackers, and more penumbral cases (...) of self-defence, involving Non-Responsible Threats, a case is assembled for the ‘Non-Liability First Account’ of self-defence. (shrink)

One Rawlsian response to G. A. Cohen’s criticisms of justice as fairness which Cohen canvasses, and then dismisses, is the 'Freedom Objection'. It comes in two versions. The 'First Version' asserts that there is an unresolved trilemma among the three principles of equality, Pareto-optimality, and freedom of occupational choice, while the 'Second Version' imputes to Rawls’s theory a concern to protect occupational freedom over equality of condition. This article is mainly concerned with advancing three claims. First, the 'ethical solution' Cohen (...) advances against the First Version of the Freedom Objection does not grant a fair hearing to the Freedom Objection. Second, the distinction Cohen presses between the legal and moral right of occupational choice in his response to the Second Version cannot save him from worries about Stalinist coercion. Third, Cohen’s response to the First Version of the Freedom Objection is actually in tension with his response to the Second Version of the Freedom Objection. (shrink)

This paper presents a moral argument in support of the view that the mind is a nonphysical object. It is intuitively obvious that we, the bearers of conscious experiences, have an inherent value that is not reducible to the value of our conscious experiences. It remains intuitively obvious that we have inherent value even when we represent ourselves to have no physical bodies whatsoever. Given certain assumptions about morality and moral intuitions, this implies that the bearers of conscious experiences—the objects (...) possessing inherent value—are not physical objects. This moral evidence is corroborated by introspective evidence. (shrink)

I briefly chart the position Einstein came to on nuclear weapons. Then I defend that position against Matchett's idea that Einstein behaved as a pop scientist and intervened ignorantly on an issue of wider concern.

There is currently debate between deflationists and anti-deflationists about the ontology of persisting objects. Some deflationists think that disputes between, for example, four-dimensionalists (e.g. Ted Sider and David Lewis) and quasi-nihilists (e.g. Peter Van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks) are merely verbal disputes. Anti-deflationists deny this. Eli Hirsch is a deflationist who maintains that many ontological disputes are merely verbal. Theodore Sider maintains that the disputes are not merely verbal. Hirsch and Sider are thus engaged in a metaontological dispute. In this (...) paper, I argue that Hirsch's metaontological dispute with Sider is, by Hirsch's own lights, itself merely verbal. I conclude that the mere verbalness of his metaontological dispute with Sider suggests that Hirsch's account of what makes a dispute merely verbal may be problematic. (shrink)

Benatar’s central argument for antinatalism develops an asymmetry between the pain and pleasure in a potential life. I am going to present an alternative route to the antinatalist conclusion. I argue that duties require victims and that as a result there is no duty to create the pleasures contained within a prospective life but a duty not to create any of its sufferings. My argument can supplement Benatar’s, but it also enjoys some advantages: it achieves a better fit with our (...) intuitions; it does not require us to acknowledge that life is a harm, or that a world devoid of life is a good thing; and it is easy to see why it does not have any pro-mortalist implications. (shrink)

This thesis examines the relationship between nihilism and postmodernism in relation to the sublime, and is divided into two parts: theory and literature. Beginning with histories of nihilism and the sublime, the Enlightenment is constructed as a conflict between the two. Rather than promote a simple binarism, however, nihilism is constructed as a temporally-displaced form of sublimity that is merely labelled as nihilism because of the dominant ideologies at the time. Postmodernism, as a product of the Enlightenment, is therefore implicitly (...) related to both nihilism and the sublime, despite the fact that it is often characterised as either nihilistic or sublime. Whereas prior forms of nihilism are ‗modernist‘ because they seek to codify reality, postmodernism creates a new formulation of nihilism – ‗postmodern nihilism‘ – that is itself sublime. This is explored in relation to a broad survey of postmodern literature through a series of interconnected themes. These themes – apocalypse, the absurd, absence, and space – arise from the debates presented in the theoretical chapters of this thesis, and demonstrate the ways in which nihilism and the sublime interact within postmodern literature. Because of the theoretical and literary debates presented within it, this thesis concludes that it cannot be a thesis at all. (shrink)

Citation: Braun G, Hellwig MK, Byrnes WM (2007) Global Climate Change and Catholic Responsibility: Facts and Faith Response. Journal of Catholic Social Thought 4(2): 373-401. Abstract: The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that human activity is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to grow hotter, which is leading to global climate change. If current rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue, it is predicted that there will be dramatic changes, including flooding, more intense heat waves and storms, and an increase in disease. (...) Indigenous peoples and the poor will be most severely affected, as will Earth’s wild animals and plants, a quarter of which could become extinct in fifty years. We urgently need to switch to renewable (non-GHG emitting) energy sources, and try to live in a simpler, more sustainable way. In this article, a renewable energy expert, a biochemist, and a theologian have come together to describe the situation in which we find ourselves, and present ideas for a solution that incorporates Catholic social teaching. (shrink)

This essay responds to the thoughtful essays on the Order of Public Reason (OPR) by Elvio Baccarini, Giulia Bistagnino and Nenad Miscevic. All three essays interrogate OPR’s understanding of moral theory - “meta” matters about the nature of morality, reasons and modeling within moral theories. I first turn to the general understanding of the moral enterprise underlying OPR, explaining why it takes a view at odds with the contemporary mainstream in moral philosophy. I then explain the idea of moral truth (...) in OPR: when it comes to social morality, moral truth is necessarily a function of what can be endorsed by some collectivity. Th is leads to a fundamental worry about theories of public reason: why is the endorsement of the public so important? And if some sort of public endorsement is really so terribly important, how can a theory of public reason withstand the fact that it advances its own controversial claims that cannot be publicly endorsed? After considering when public endorsement is necessary, and when public reason theories can make controversial claims, I close by considering in what way OPR does, and in what way it does not, employ a thought experiment, and the complexities of that. (shrink)

Numerous studies of the beliefs of people with anorexia nervosa (AN) suggest that a subset of such individuals may experience delusions. We first describe what makes a belief delusional and conclude that such characteristics can be appropriately applied to some beliefs of people with AN. Next, we outline how delusional beliefs may relate to the broader psychopathological process in AN, including: (1) they may be epiphenomenal; (2) they may be an initial partial cause of AN; (3) they may be caused (...) by aspects of AN; or (4) they may be sustaining causes, possibly involved in reciprocal causal relations with aspects of AN. We argue that there is good reason to believe that delusional beliefs of people with AN are not merely epiphenomenal, but rather that they’re causally connected to AN. Because of this, empirical studies can be designed to test for the presence of causal relations. We describe how these studies should be designed. The results of such studies have important implications for understanding the experience of individuals with AN and for the treatment of AN. We outline these implications. (shrink)

Festschrift in Honor of Barry Smith on the occasion of his 65th Birthday. Published as issue 4:4 of the journal Cosmos + Taxis: Studies in Emergent Order and Organization. Includes contributions by Wolfgang Grassl, Nicola Guarino, John T. Kearns, Rudolf Lüthe, Luc Schneider, Peter Simons, Wojciech Żełaniec, and Jan Woleński.

In their cognitive theory of emotion, Schachter and Singer proposed that feelings are separable from what they are about. As a test, they induced feelings of arousal by injecting epinephrine and then molded them into different emotions. They illuminated how feelings in one moment lead into the next to form a stream of conscious experience. We examine the construction of emotion in a similar spirit. We use the sensory integration process to understand how the brain combines disparate sources of information (...) to construct both perceptual and emotional models of the world even as the world continues to change. We emphasize two processes: affect segmentation and affect integration. (shrink)

In Beyond Art (2014), Dominic Lopes proposed a new theory of art, the buck passing theory. Rather than attempting to define art in terms of exhibited or genetic featured shared by all artworks, Lopes passes the buck to theories of individual arts. He proposes that we seek theories of music, painting, poetry, and other arts. Once we have these theories, we know everything there is to know about the theory of art. This essay presents two challenges to the theory. First, (...) this essay argues that Lopes is wrong in supposing that theories of arts were developed to deal with the ‘hard cases’ – developments such as Duchamp’s readymades and conceptual art. This is a problem since Lopes holds that the buck passing theory’s capacity to deal with the hard cases is one of its virtues. Second, this essay argues that the buck passing theory has no account of which activities are arts and no account of what makes some activity an art. (shrink)

The nature of practical reasoning is a matter of considerable philosophical interest, particularly the extent to which the process can be understood in terms of standard (i.e. deductive) reasoning, and what form it might take. Even were it to turn out, e.g. as per Aristotle, that essential elements cannot be accommodated deductively, it would still remain of interest to delimit any and all respects that can be so accommodated. -/- In the following I wish to demonstrate that the culmination of (...) a typical deliberative process can be represented deductively. (shrink)

Feminist social theory and female body experience are the twin themes of Iris Marion Young's twelve outstanding essays written over the past decade and brought together here. Her contributions to social theory raise critical questions about women and citizenship, the relations of capitalism and women's oppression, and the differences between a feminist theory that emphasizes women's difference and one that assumes a gender-neutral humanity. Loosely following a phenomenological method of description, Young's essays on female embodiment discuss female movement, (...) pregnancy, clothing, and the breasted body. In an introduction that situates her work in the context of shifts in feminist theory and politics over the past decade, Young emphasizes the rootedness of her theorizing in a dedicated and seasoned political activism. (shrink)

This is a letter from an amateur philosopher to Alex Byrne expressing perplexity on reading Byrne's chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Mind, "Sensory Qualities, Sensible Qualities, Sensational Qualities" (2009). A version of the theory of indirect perception is described using several analogies and one autobiographical episode. It is described as a realization that occurred historically and may occur to individuals, supplanting default naive realism. Byrne's readings of various philosophers' accounts of sensory qualities are then contrasted with (...) an interpretation consistent with the adduced theory of indirect perception. The difficulty of imagining the view from the opposite side of the direct/indirect perception divide is remarked upon. (shrink)

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of (...) judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

Das deutsche Gesundheitswesen steht durch die schnell steigende Anzahl an CO- VID-19-Erkrankten vor erheblichen Herausforderungen. In dieser Krisensituation sind alle Beteiligten mit ethischen Fragen konfrontiert, beispielsweise nach gerech- ten Verteilungskriterien bei begrenzten Ressourcen und dem gesundheitlichen Schutz des Personals angesichts einer bisher nicht therapierbaren Erkrankung. Daher werden schon jetzt klinische und ambulante Ethikberatungsangebote verstärkt mit Anfragen nach Unterstützung konfrontiert. Wie können Ethikberater*innen Entscheidungen in der Krankenversorgung im Rahmen der COVID-19-Pandemie unterstützen? Welche Grenzen von Ethikberatung sind zu beachten? Bislang liegen hierzu (...) noch wenige praktische Erfahrungen vor. Angesichts der dynamischen Entwicklung erscheint es der Akademie für Ethik in der Medizin (AEM) wichtig, einen Diskurs über die angemessene Rolle der Ethikberatung bei der Bewältigung der vielfachen Heraus- forderungen durch die COVID-19-Pandemie zu führen und professionelle Hinweise zu geben. Mit dem vorliegenden Diskussionspapier möchte die AEM einen Beitrag zur Beantwortung wesentlicher Fragen leisten, die sich für die Ethikberatung in den verschiedenen Bereichen des Gesundheitswesens stellen. Sie regt an, diesen Dis- kurs weiter zu führen und hat ein Online-Forum (s. unten) eingerichtet, in dem Ethikberater*innen ihre Erfahrungen teilen und die professionelle Selbstreflexion der Ethikberatung in Pandemiezeiten mit Anregungen fördern können. (shrink)

The notions of a commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal and a commutative falling neutrosophic ideal are introduced, and several properties are investigated. Characterizations of a commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal are obtained. Relations between commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal and (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal are discussed. Conditions for an (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal to be a commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal are established. Relations between commutative (∈, ∈)-neutrosophic ideal, falling neutrosophic ideal and commutative falling neutrosophic ideal are considered. Conditions for a falling neutrosophic ideal to be (...) commutative are provided. (shrink)

An analysis of a valenced corpus of English words revealed that words that rhyme with slurs are rated more poorly than their synonyms. What at first might seem like a bizarre coincidence turns out to be a robust feature of slurs, one arising from their phonetic structure. We report novel data on phonaesthetic preferences, showing that a particular class of phonemes are both particularly disliked, and overrepresented in slurs. We argue that phonaesthetic associations have been an overlooked source of some (...) of the more peculiar, arational aspects of slurs. We conclude by drawing broader morals about the evolution of the lexicon. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 90-114, February 2020.

There is consensus within the chemosciences that olfactory perception is of the molecular structure of chemical compounds, yet within philosophical theories of smell there is little agreement about the nature of smell. The paper critically assesses the current state of debate regarding smells within philosophy in the hopes of setting it upon firm scientific footing. The theories to be covered are: Naïve Realism, Hedonic Theories, Process Theory, Odor Theories, and non-Objectivist Theories. The aforementioned theories will be evaluated based on their (...) explanations of the (a) the olfactory quality of a smell, (b) smells as distal entities, and (c) our experience of smells as intentional objects. The paper concludes with a defense of Molecular Structure Theory that demonstrating its superiority in accounting for each of these three aspects of smell. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

The word ‘equality’ often requires disambiguation, which is provided by context or by an explicit modifier. For each sort of magnitude, there is at least one sense of ‘equals’ with its correlated senses of ‘is greater than’ and ‘is less than’. Given any two magnitudes of the same sort—two line segments, two plane figures, two solids, two time intervals, two temperature intervals, two amounts of money in a single currency, and the like—the one equals the other or the one is (...) greater than the other or the one is greater than the other [sc. in appropriate correlated senses of ‘equals’, ‘is greater than’ and ‘is less than’]. In case there are two or more appropriate senses of ‘equals’, the one intended is often indicated by an adverb. For example, one plane figure may be said to be equal in area to another and, in certain cases, one plane figure may be said to be equal in length to another. Each sense of ‘equality’ is tied to a specific domain and is therefore non-logical. Notice that in every cases ‘equality’ is definable in terms of ‘is greater than’ and also in terms of ‘is less than’ both of which are routinely considered domain specific, non-logical. The word ‘identity’ in the logical sense does not require disambiguation. Moreover, it is not correlated ‘is greater than’ and ‘is less than’. If it is not the case that a certain designated triangle is [sc. is identical to] an otherwise designated triangle, it is not necessary for the one to be greater than or less than the other. Moreover, if two magnitudes are equal then a unit of measure can be chosen and, no matter what unit is chosen, each magnitude is the same multiple of the unit that the other is. But identity does not require units. In this regard, congruence is like identity and unlike equality. In arithmetic, the logical concept of identity is coextensive with the arithmetic concept of equality. The logical concept of identity admits of an analytically adequate definition in terms of logical concepts: given any number x and any number y, x is y iff x has every property that y has. The arithmetical concept of equality admits of an analytically adequate definition in terms of arithmetical concepts: given any number x and any number y, x equals y iff x is neither less than nor greater than y. As Aristotle told us and as Frege retold us, just because one relation is coextensive with another is no reason to conclude that they are one. (shrink)

Olfactory perception provides a promising test case for enactivism, since smelling involves actively sampling our surrounding environment by sniffing. Smelling deploys implicit skillful knowledge of how our movement and the airflow around us yield olfactory experiences. The hybrid nature of olfactory experience makes it an ideal test case for enactivism with its esteem for touch and theoretical roots in vision. Olfaction is like vision in facilitating the perception of distal objects, yet it requires us to breath in and physically contact (...) the sensory object in a manner similar to touch. The paper offers an analysis of the central theoretical components of enactivism, whose soundness and empirical viability are tested using the empirical literature on sniffing. It will be shown that even if sniffing is an essential component of olfaction, the motoric component is not necessary for perceiving smells, which is contrary to the most crucial tenet of enactivism. Thus, the paper concludes that the theory cannot account for olfactory perception. (shrink)

The chapter unfolds in the following sections. The first section exam- ines the reasons for claiming that olfactory perception is spatially unstruc- tured and our experience of smells has an abstract structure. The second section elucidates the further arguments that olfaction cannot generate figure-ground segregation. The third section assesses the conclusion that olfactory perception and experience cannot solve the MPP. Following the overview of the many problems inherent to distal olfactory percep- tion, MST will be introduced as an alternative perspective (...) that allows for figure-ground segregation and perceiving multiple olfactory objects within an array. The chapter then concludes by replying to the shared argument that olfactory distal perception does not have the requisite res- olution to resolve the many properties problem. (shrink)