Agent-centered morality has been a serious challenge to ethical theories based on agent-neutral morality in defining what is the moral point of view. In this paper, my concern is to examine whether arguments for agent-centered morality, in particular, arguments for agent-centered option, can be justified. -/- After critically examining three main arguments for agent-centered morality, I will contend that although there is a ring of truth in the demands of agent-centered morality, agent-centered morality is more problematic than agent-neutral morality. Nevertheless, (...) we need to take seriously the challenges to agent-neutral morality by finding a way to reflect the insight of agent-centered morality within the framework of agent-neutral morality without collapsing it into agent-centered morality. As a way of doing so, I suggest that we need to integrate the situated, rather than transcendental, nonideal, rather than idealized, and dialogical, rather than monological, perspectives developed in feminist ethics, into agent-neutral morality. (shrink)

In this paper the concept of temporality in the theories of Bergson, Husserl, and Heidegger is analyzed from a phenomenological perspective. Husserl and Heidegger studied the problems of consciousness and existence in the framework of their analysis of time. Bergson, as one of the proto-phenomenological forerunners, reveals the core connections of the phenomenological concept of temporality to the wider range of philosophy. Based on their theories on time, I suggest a three dimensional system for understanding of time in relation to (...) motion and existence. (shrink)

This paper explores the phenomenological concept “we” based on a pre-existing understanding of traditional phenomenology alongside a new aspect of the concept by introducing an analysis of “we” in Korean. The central questions of this paper are whether the “we” can be understood as more than a collection of individuals, whether the “we” can precede both “I” and “thou,” and whether the “we” as an extension of the “I” or an extended self should necessarily mean the plural of the “I.”.

In this paper, violence is analyzed as phenomenon through which a defective state of our understanding of Being reveals itself.

It is widely held that there is an asymmetry between our access to our minds and our access to others’ minds. Philosophers in the literature tend to focus on the asymmetry between our access to our mental states and our access to those mental states of others that are not shared by us. What if a mental state can have multiple subjects? Is there still an asymmetry between our access to our mental states and our access to those mental states (...) of others that are also ours? In this paper, I discuss the implications of a case of shared consciousness—the case of the Hogan twins—for asymmetry. I start by clarifying the notion of asymmetry. Here I develop a characterization of asymmetry and argue that it is preferable to the standard approaches in the literature. I then present the twins’ case and argue that it does not threaten asymmetry. I close by drawing some lessons. (shrink)

Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism 華嚴宗, a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. In (...) this paper, I first develop a contemporary interpretation of Huayan interdependence by employing the definitional account of essence and the essence-based account of dependence. Through these contemporary resources, I elucidate and unify the theses of interdependence, mutual identity, and mutual containment within Huayan Buddhism. I then propose a unique framework of ontological dependence that suggests varying degrees of ontological dependence, aimed at accommodating and explaining away our intuitions against pervasive and symmetric dependence. By contemporizing Huayan Buddhism, I explore its potential and facilitate engagement between contemporary metaphysics and Huayan Buddhism. (shrink)

According to Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the founder of the Chinese Buddhist Tiantai school 天臺宗, “one object is all objects;” hence, all objects are profoundly interconnected. In this paper, I critically examine Zhiyi’s metaphysics of objects as presented in the historical Tiantai texts and subsequently develop a contemporary and accessible thesis of interconnectedness by integrating Zhiyi’s views with resources from contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly relative identity. By drawing on Zhiyi’s insights and incorporating contemporary philosophical ideas, I also illustrate how historical Chinese (...) Buddhism and contemporary analytic metaphysics can be mutually informing. (shrink)

When you have a conscious experience—such as feeling pain, watching the sunset, or thinking about your loved ones—are you aware of the experience as your own, even when you do not reflect on, think about, or attend to it? Let us say that an experience has “mineness” just in case its subject is aware of it as her own while she undergoes it. And let us call the view that all ordinary experiences have mineness “typicalism.” Recently, Guillot has offered a (...) novel argument for typicalism by leveraging the relation between self-knowledge and self-awareness. She starts by arguing that all ordinary experiences give their subjects immediate justification to believe that their experiences are their own. She then argues that this can be explained by typicalism. In this paper, I argue that her argument fails. I start by clarifying the notion of mineness and giving more details about her argument. I then explain why her argument fails by raising doubts about whether typicalism explains the target explanandum. I close by considering some implications of our discussion for self-knowledge. (shrink)

Since the transparency approach to introspection need not posit a dedicated mechanism specialized for detecting one’s own mental states, its economy is often viewed as a major advantage by both proponents and opponents. But sometimes economy comes at the cost of relying on controversial views of the natures of mental states. Perceptual experience is a case in point. For example, Alex Byrne’s account relies on the view that experience constitutively involves belief, and Matthew Boyle’s account relies on the view that (...) experience constitutively involves a form of implicit consciousness of experience. In this paper, I develop a transparency account of our access to our experiences that retains the benefit of economy while avoiding the cost of relying on controversial views of the nature of experience. I start by discussing Byrne’s and Boyle’s accounts. I focus on the problems that lead them to hold the controversial views they do, and raise some challenges to their solutions. I then develop my own account. I argue that when you attend to an object, your experience gives you justification to believe that you see the object (under some descriptions). I close by highlighting some advantages of my account. I argue that it (1) can solve the problems facing Byrne and Boyle without relying on controversial views of the nature of experience; (2) respects the idea that there is something special about our access to our minds; and (3) can be generalized to other cases of introspection. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker argues that a certain class of self-ascriptions is immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronouns. In their “Self-Consciousness and Immunity,” Timothy Lane and Caleb Liang question Shoemaker’s view. Lang and Liang present a clinical case and an experiment and argue that they are counterexamples to Shoemaker’s view. This paper is a response to Lane and Liang’s challenge. I identify the desiderata that a counterexample to Shoemaker’s view must meet and show that somatoparaphrenia and the Body (...) Swap Illusion fail to meet those desiderata. Thus, despite being puzzling phenomena, somatoparaphrenia and the Body Swap Illusion are not counterexamples to Shoemaker’s view. (shrink)

Mindfulness training has been used to improve emotional wellbeing in early adolescents. However, little is known about treatment outcome moderators, or individual differences that may differentially impact responses to treatment. The current study focused on gender as a potential moderator for affective outcomes in response to school-based mindfulness training. Sixth grade students (N = 100) were randomly assigned to either the six weeks of mindfulness meditation or the active control group as part of a history class curriculum. Participants in the (...) mindfulness meditation group completed short mindfulness meditation sessions four to five times per week, in addition to didactic instruction (Asian history). The control group received matched experiential activity in addition to didactic instruction (African history) from the same teacher with no meditation component. Self-reported measures of emotional wellbeing/affect, mindfulness, and self-compassion were obtained at pre and post intervention. Meditators reported greater improvement in emotional wellbeing compared to those in the control group. Importantly, gender differences were detected, such that female meditators reported greater increases in positive affect compared to females in the control group, whereas male meditators and control males displayed equivalent gains. Uniquely among females but not males, increases in self-reported self-compassion were associated with improvements in affect. These findings support the efficacy of school-based mindfulness interventions, and interventions tailored to accommodate distinct developmental needs of female and male adolescents. (shrink)

1: Placebo effect sometimes plausibly has powerful effects. 2: Buddhism philosophy holds that every living animal is sentient, and has a consciousness and killing them is bad for the killer and freeing them is good somehow. Consciousness may involve some aspects of quantum mechanism as Roger Penrose’s Orch OR' theory of consciousness pointed out. -/- 3: Although previous studies show that there is no “demonstrable effects of distant intercessory prayer. Anecdotal cases of a special kind of Buddhist activity of freeing (...) captive animals in huge amount seem to have powerful therapeutic effects on severe and terminal patients. We want test it experimentally. 4: The cunning point that exceeds previous stuies is, it’s reasonable to consider there may be collective and superpositional effects of this activity due to the likely quantum mechanism of consciousness, and it may play as a sort of magnifying glass that shows a discernible placebo effect. -/- 5:We recruit a considerable number of patients that are terminally ill and the doctors said they can not help them anymore and have double-blind experiments of the above idea.The statistics may show some anomalous distribution. Ethical concerns shall take into consideration. (shrink)

This study investigated changes in the prevalence of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ≥19-year-old population in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2019 and 2020 was included. The histories of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts were compared between the 2019 and 2020 cohorts using multiple logistic regression analysis with complex sampling. The prevalence of depression was not significantly different between the 2019 and 2020 groups (4.1% vs. 4.5%, p = 0.326). The prevalence (...) of stress and suicide attempts was also not significantly different between groups (all p > 0.05). The rates of depression, stress, and suicide attempts were not associated with the 2020 group compared to the 2019 group (all p > 0.05). The 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2020 group indicated a higher rate of depression (diagnosed by physicians) than the 19- to 39-year-old group in the 2019 group (adjusted odds ratio = 1.58, 95% confidence intervals = 1.00–2.50, p = 0.049). The risks of depression, stress, and suicidal attempts were not related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Korean adults. A young adult population demonstrated an increased risk of depression associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The paper by Monteiro, Musten and Compson (2014) is to be commended for providing a comprehensive discussion of the compatibility issues arising from the integration of mindfulness – a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice – into research and applied psychological domains. Consistent with the observations of various others (e.g., Dunne, 2011; Kang & Whittingham, 2010), Monteiro and colleagues have not only highlighted that there are differences in how Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness interventional approaches interpret and contextualize mindfulness, but there are also (...) differing interpretations of mindfulness within Buddhism. These apparent differences within Buddhism are arguably more noticeable when making comparisons across Buddhist vehicles (i.e., Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), but to a lesser extent intra-vehicular differences can also be said to exist (i.e., differences between Buddhist traditions of the same vehicle). This commentary investigates the validity of some of these different Buddhist constructions of mindfulness, and then discusses how a better understanding of their scriptural and conceptual soundness (or lack thereof) may help to reconcile some of the actual and perceived incompatibility between Buddhist practice and contemporary secular mindfulness-based approaches. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

This study demonstrates the combinations of multiple causal factors that formulate a startup’s strategy to successfully “exit”, namely “recipes for a successful exit,” in the clean- and hard-tech sector. We identify seven key causal factors (i.e., causal conditions) that impact startup success, including commercial readiness, investor interactions, favorable industry, non-financial support, straightforward development path, experienced team, and visibility to investors. We also investigate the combinations of selective causal conditions that can provide further synergetic impact. We conduct the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative (...) analysis (fsQCA) on seven U.S. clean- and hard-tech startups that exited between 2005 and 2016. The successful companies all demonstrate distinctive characteristics based on three general categories (1) robust ecosystem; (2) heavy-lifting team; or (3) external opportunity. Across these three categories, commercial readiness and strong investor interactions are necessary conditions for all exit cases. But there are important differences that drive success in each category, such as the interaction with non-financial support (in the robust ecosystem case), experienced team (in the heavy-lifting team case), and favorable industry (in the external opportunity case). Our findings are meant to support entrepreneurs in reaching an exit by optimizing the given internal and external circumstances, and policymakers to build a robust ecosystem that can increase the success rate of the clean- and hard-tech development. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

The present article analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal the contradictions of the current unipolar (...) world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. The authors also explain the strengthening belief that the US leading status will inevitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world without a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coalitions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsibility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coalitions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World System and bring an increasing turbulence and conflict intensity. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subjects assertion that p matches her non-verbal behavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from nearly 6,000 people across twenty-six samples, spanning twenty-two countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we suggest that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely (...) asserts that p, non-linguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairness behavior because moral traits are generally measured through self-report. This experiment focused on day-to-day interpersonal fairness rather than impersonal justice, and fairness was assessed as observed behavior. The experiment investigated whether a self-reported fairness trait would moderate a situational influence on observed fairness behavior, such that individuals with a stronger fairness trait would be less affected by a situational influence than those with a weaker fairness trait. (...) We used an iterated resource game in which participants could withdraw resources as they chose, and we manipulated the number of resources bogus players withdrew. The number of resources participants withdrew was the behavioral measure of fairness. Results confirmed the expected moderation of the unfairness manipulation by a fairness trait on observed behavior. Those reporting a stronger fairness trait were unaffected by the manipulation, whereas those reporting a weaker fairness trait were more strongly influenced. (shrink)

This study aimed to evaluate if eye blinks can be used to discriminate players with different performance in a session of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris. To that end, we developed a state-of-the-art method for blink extraction from EAR measures, which is robust enough to be used with data collected by a low-grade webcam such as the ones widely available on laptop computers. Our results show a significant decrease in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) during the first minute of playing (...) Tetris. After having defined 3 groups of proficiency based on in-game performance (Novices, Intermediates, and Experts) we found out that expert players display a significantly lower decrease in blinks/m compared to novices during the first minute of gameplay, which shows that Tetris players' proficiency can be detected by looking at eye blinks/m variations during the early phase of a game session. This difference in blinks/m is observed throughout the entire game session, which supports the general conclusion that proficient Tetris players have a lower decrease in blinks/m, even when playing more difficult levels. Finally, we offer some interpretations of this effect and the relationship that our results may have with the visual cognitive workload experienced during the gameplay. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong-Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to engage (...) in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Development of the world economy bears numerous negative phenomena, and require constant need to rebalance socioeconomic interests of nations, transnational subjects, and individuals. Socialisation is an important and effective tool for balancing social and individual; however, despite socialisation is evolving rapidly, its scientific and practical potential is not duly uncovered. In the article theoretical and methodological foundations of socialisation of economy is surveyed in the context of globalisation, and etymology, explanations, scope, historical phases of development, theoretical aspects and practical forms (...) of use, consequences and prospects are analysed. The term «socialisation» was determined as a multidisciplinary, used in many scientific fields, increasingly involving various areas of research and is understood as inclusion, adaptation and development of human being in society. It was determined that the economy socialisation is implemented in different fields and semantic structures, contains a large number of methodological tools, is involved at all management levels, and is primarily identified with the increasing role of social component in the life of human resources. The assumptions were made about the future transformation of this category in line with the identified predictive trends. (shrink)

In this study, we predict the different levels of performance in a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris session based on the score and the number of matches played by the players. Using the first 45 seconds of gameplay, a Random Forest Classifier was trained on the five keys used in the game obtaining a ROC_AUC score of 0.80. Further analysis revealed that the number of down keys (forced drop) and the number of left keys (left translation) are the most relevant (...) keys in this task, showing that by merely including the data from these two keys our Random Forest Classifier reached a ROC_AUC score of 0.83.We conclude that the keylogger data during the early phases of a game session can be successfully used to predict performance in longer sessions of Tetris. (shrink)

In this study, we analyzed the blinking behavior of players in a video game tournament. Our aim was to test whether spontaneous blink patterns differ across levels of expertise. We used blink rate, blink duration, blink frequency, and eyelid movements represented by the Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) to train a machine learning classifier to discriminate between different levels of expertise. Classifier performance was highly influenced by features such as the mean, standard deviation and median EAR. Moreover, further analysis suggests that (...) blinking rate and blink duration are likely to increase along with the level of expertise. We speculate this may be indicative of a reduction in cognitive load and lowered stress of expert players. In general, our results suggest that EAR and blink patterns can be used to identify different levels of expertise of video game players. (shrink)

Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.

Teachers encountered numerous challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak. Herewith, this study aimed to determine the challenges encountered by Filipino teachers in the new normal and their coping mechanisms. This study employed a qualitative inquiry to determine the challenges encountered and coping mechanisms employed by teachers amid modular instruction, involving 10 teachers from five secondary schools in the Philippines who participated voluntarily. Data were gathered through a written narrative from each participant and were analyzed thematically. Themed findings showed that these (...) teachers are greatly challenged in terms of learning quality transfer, module distribution and retrieval, students’ difficulties in following instruction, power disruption, internet connection, and health risks posed by the pandemic. Nevertheless, these teachers dealt with these difficulties by employing their own coping techniques. Teaching can be challenging and frustrating, especially in these difficult times, but as these teachers demonstrated, everything is possible. Hence, educators must be ready for any situation that may arise. This situation is unlikely to get better anytime soon; instead, teachers will need to adjust to and accept this reality. (shrink)

In recent discussions, it has been argued that a theory of animal rights is at odds with a liberal abortion policy. In response, Francione (1995) argues that the principles used in the animal rights discourse do not have implications for the abortion debate. I challenge Francione’s conclusion by illustrating that his own framework of animal rights, supplemented by a relational account of moral obligation, can address the moral issue of abortion. I first demonstrate that Francione’s animal rights position, which grounds (...) moral consideration in sentience, is committed to the claim that a sentient fetus has a right to life. I then illustrate that a fully developed account of animal rights that recognizes the special obligations humans have to assist animals when we cause them to be dependent and vulnerable through our voluntary actions or omissions is committed to the following: a woman also has a special obligation to assist a sentient fetus when she causes it to be dependent and vulnerable through her voluntary actions or omissions. From these considerations, it will become evident that a fully developed and consistent animal rights ethic does in fact have implications for the abortion discussion. (shrink)

In this chapter, we consider ethical and philosophical aspects of trust in the practice of medicine. We focus on trust within the patient-physician relationship, trust and professionalism, and trust in Western (allopathic) institutions of medicine and medical research. Philosophical approaches to trust contain important insights into medicine as an ethical and social practice. In what follows we explain several philosophical approaches and discuss their strengths and weaknesses in this context. We also highlight some relevant empirical work in the section on (...) trust in the institutions of medicine. It is hoped that the approaches discussed here can be extended to nursing and other topics in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

What does it mean for a proposition to be "true in a fiction"? According to the account offered by Kendall Walton in Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990), what is fictionally true, or simply fictional, is what a work of fiction invites or prescribes that we imagine. To say that it is fictional that Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, for example, is to say that we are supposed to imagine that event. Yet Walton gives no account of the (...) kind of imagining relevant to understanding fictionality. In this paper I argue that the relevant kind of imagining is imagining a storyworld. I propose an account of this sort of imagining, as well as the nature of the invitations or prescriptions to imagine generated by fiction. I show that this account can be defended against various criticisms of Walton's original view, including his own argument in 2015 that prescriptions to imagine provide only necessary conditions for fictionality. (shrink)

Traditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surveillance of the public sphere can undermine the capacity of citizens (...) to freely deliberate in public and therefore conflicts with democratic self-determination. (shrink)

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

For years now, unionization has been under vigorous attack. Membership has been steadily declining, and with it union bargaining power. As a result, unions may soon lose their ability to protect workers from economic and personal abuse, as well as their significance as a political force. In the Name of Liberty responds to this worrying state of affairs by presenting a new argument for unionization, one that derives an argument for universal unionization in both the private and public sector from (...) concepts of liberty that we already accept. In short, In the Name of Liberty reclaims the argument for liberty from the political right, and shows how liberty not only requires the unionization of every workplace as a matter of background justice, but also supports a wide variety of other progressive policies. (shrink)

In this paper, I do three things. First, I say what I mean by a ‘companions in guilt’ argument in meta-ethics. Second, I distinguish between two kinds of argument within this family, which I call ‘arguments by entailment’ and ‘arguments by analogy’. Third, I explore the prospects for companions in guilt arguments by analogy. During the course of this discussion, I identify a distinctive variety of argument, which I call ‘arguments by absorption’. I argue that this variety of argument inherits (...) some of the weaknesses of standard arguments by analogy and entailment without obviously adding to their strength. (shrink)

According to asymmetric comparativism, it is worse for a person to exist with a miserable life than not to exist, but it is not better for a person to exist with a happy life than not to exist. My aim in this paper is to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. My account of asymmetric comparativism begins with a different asymmetry, regarding the (dis)value of early death. I offer an account of this early death asymmetry, appealing to the (...) idea of conditional goods, and generalize it to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. I also address the objection that asymmetric comparativism has unacceptably antinatalist implications. (shrink)

The arguments of Fodor, Garret, Walker and Parkes [(1980) Against definitions, Cognition, 8, 263-367] are the source of widespread skepticism in cognitive science about lexical semantic structure. Whereas the thesis that lexical items, and the concepts they express, have decompositional structure (i.e. have significant constituents) was at one time "one of those ideas that hardly anybody [in the cognitive sciences] ever considers giving up" (p. 264), most researchers now believe that "[a]ll the evidence suggests that the classical [(decompositional)] view is (...) wrong as a general theory of concepts" [Smith, Medin & Rips (1984) A psychological approach to concepts: comments on Rey, Cognition, 17, 272], and cite Fodor et al. (1980) as "sounding the death knell for decompositional theories" [MacNamara & Miller (1989) Attributes of theories of meaning, Psychological Bulletin, 106, 360]. I argue that the prevailing skepticism is unmotivated by the arguments in Fodor et al. Fodor et al. misrepresent the form, function and scope of the decompositional hypothesis, and the procedures they employ to test for the psychological reality of definitions are flawed. I argue, further, that decompositional explanations of the phenomena they consider are preferable to their primitivist alternatives, and, hence, that there is prima facie reason to accept them as evidence for the existence of decompositional structure. Cognitive scientists would, therefore, do well to revert to their former commitment to the decompositional hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper defends a new norm of assertion: Assert that p only if you are in a position to know that p. We test the norm by judging its performance in explaining three phenomena that appear jointly inexplicable at first: Moorean paradoxes, lottery propositions, and selfless assertions. The norm succeeds by tethering unassertability to unknowability while untethering belief from assertion. The PtK‐norm foregrounds the public nature of assertion as a practice that can be other‐regarding, allowing asserters to act in the (...) best interests of their audience when psychological pressures would otherwise prevent them from communicating the knowable truth. (shrink)

I will develop a new problem for almost all realist theories of colour. The problem involves fluctuations in our colour experiences that are due to visual noise rather than changes in the objects we are looking at.

The aim of this article is to explore the impact of Darwinism in metaethics and dispel some of the confusion surrounding it. While the prospects for a Darwinian metaethics appear to be improving, some underlying epistemological issues remain unclear. We will focus on the so-called Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) which, when applied in metaethics, are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs so as to undermine their epistemic justification. The point is that an epistemic disanalogy (...) can be identified in the debate on EDAs between moral beliefs and other kinds of beliefs, insofar as only the former are regarded as vulnerable to EDAs. First, we will analyze some significant debunking positions in metaethics in order to show that they do not provide adequate justification for such an epistemic disanalogy. Then, we will assess whether they can avoid the accusation of being epistemically incoherent by adopting the same evolutionary account for all kinds of beliefs. In other words, once it is argued that Darwinism has a corrosive impact on metaethics, what if its universal acid cannot be contained? (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz allows for not only physiological facts and psychological inferences, but also perspectival reasoning, to influence perceptual experience and knowledge gained from perception. But Helmholtz also defends a version of the view according to which there can be a kind of “perspectival truth” revealed in scientific research and investigation. Helmholtz argues that the relationships between subjective and objective, real and actual, actual and illusory, must be analyzed scientifically, within experience. There is no standpoint outside experience from which we (...) can reason, no extra-sensory knowledge of the constitution of the “ideal subject” or of the properties of “real objects.” In the tradition of psychophysics inherited by Helmholtz, we can arrive at a kind of perspectival analysis of perceptual experience, which embeds an account of that experience within the context of the history and situation of the perceiving subject. That analysis is relative to the perceiving subject, but the perspectival explanations Helmholtz constructs are not thereby relativist: in fact, for Helmholtz, the more squarely the perceiving subject is placed in a scientific, perspectival context, the more facts we are able to learn about her experience and the objects with which she interacts. (shrink)

Despite the enormity of the financial losses flowing from the 2008 financial crisis and the outrageousness of the conduct that led up to it, almost no individual involved has been prosecuted for criminal conduct, much less actually gone to prison. What this chapter argues is that the failure to punish those in management for their role in this misconduct stems from a misunderstanding of the need to prove that they personally knew of this wrongdoing and harbored an intent to defraud. (...) But not only would negligence be a sufficient legal and moral basis for imposing terms of imprisonment in these cases, mere causal responsibility would also be enough, for causal responsibility has embed in it all we need to find those causally responsible morally responsible too, and once some basis for moral responsibility is established, the imposition of terms of imprisonment is both legally permitted and morally just. (shrink)

Guilt is a moral emotion that plays an important role in some understandings and manifestations of moral injury. In “Ulterior Motives and Moral Injury in War,” I note that soldiers returning from war are often assailed by profound feelings of guilt. Such soldiers might feel irrevocably diminished as persons, which is characteristic of a type of moral injury. I explore how the ulterior motives of the leaders who authorized the war might exacerbate the moral injury of soldiers. According to the (...) argument I develop, civilian and military leaders, by virtue of their practical authority over combatants serving in the military, confer upon those combatants a particular purpose. The ulterior motives that the leaders harbor constitutively determine the content of the purpose they confer. So long as a combatant remains under the practical authority of her leaders, there is nothing she can do to divest herself of the specific purpose conferred upon her. Even if the war and her conduct in it are just by hypothesis, her sense of integrity might demand more: that she helps kill only for scrupulous purposes. It might be impossible to reconcile the demands of integrity with the cynical purpose that her self-serving, career-minded, opportunistic leaders confer upon her. This failure to justify to herself the carnage she helps cause can exacerbate the severity of any psychological trauma she suffers. (shrink)

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first (triage), and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first (vaccine distribution). Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both whole lives (survival to discharge) and life-years (survival for (...) years past discharge). This process of collective moral reasoning has revealed our common commitment to both Kantian and utilitarian principles. For Kant, respecting people’s rights entails that we ought to value whole lives equally. Therefore we ought to allocate resources so as to maximise the number of patients who survive to discharge. By contrast, the principle of utility has us maximise life-years so that people can satisfy more of their considered preferences. Although people are treated impartially in the utilitarian calculus, it does not recognise their equal worth. Subjecting Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to the process of reflective equilibrium lends support to the idea that we need a pluralistic approach that would accommodate our moral intuitions regarding both the equal value of whole lives and the additive value of life-years. (shrink)

In graph theory, the concept of domination is essential in a variety of domains. It has broad applications in diverse fields such as coding theory, computer net work models, and school bus routing and facility lo cation problems. If a fuzzy graph fails to obtain acceptable results, neutrosophic sets and neutrosophic graphs can be used to model uncertainty correlated with indeterminate and inconsistent information in arbitrary real-world scenario. In this study, we consider the concept of domination as it relates to (...) single-valued neutrosophic incidence graphs (SVNIGs). Given the importance of domination and its utilization in numerous fields, we propose the application of dominating sets in SVNIG with valid edges. We present some relevant definitions such as those of valid edges, cardinality, and isolated vertices in SVNIG along with some examples. Furthermore, we also show a few significant sets connected to the dominating set in an SVNIG such as independent and irredundant sets. We also investigate a relationship between the concepts of dominating sets and domination numbers as well as irredundant and independence sets in SVNIGs. Finally, a real-life deployment of domination in SVNIGsis investigated in relation to COVID-19 vaccination locations as a practical application. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)