We show that early vision can use monocular cues to rapidly complete partially-occluded objects. Visual search for easily detected fragments becomes difficult when the completed shape is similar to others in the display; conversely, search for fragments that are difficult to detect becomes easy when the completed shape is distinctive. Results indicate that completion occurs via the occlusion-triggered removal of occlusion edges and linking of associated regions. We fail to find evidence for a visible filling-in of contours or surfaces, but (...) do find evidence for a "functional" filling-in that prevents the constituent fragments from being rapidly accessed. As such, it is only the completed structures—and not the fragments themselves—that serve as the basis for rapid recognition. (shrink)

My argument proceeds in two stages. In §I, I sum up the intuitions of a popular argument for 'satisfaction accounts' of Purgatory that I label, TAP. I then offer an argument, taken from a few standard orthodox Christian beliefs and one axiom of Christian theology, to so show that TAP is unsound. In the same section, I entertain some plausible responses to my argument that are prima facie consistent with these beliefs and axiom. I find these responses wanting. In §II, (...) I offer a sorites problem for TAP, given the orthodox Christian understanding of Christ’s parousia, showing that TAP and the intuitions driving it are faulty. To attempt something of a corrective, I end by offering some modest theological suggestions for thinking through “the logic of total transformation.”. (shrink)

The task of visual search is to determine as rapidly as possible whether a target item is present or absent in a display. Rapidly detected items are thought to contain features that correspond to primitive elements in the human visual system. In previous theories, it has been assumed that visual search is based on simple two-dimensional features in the image. However, visual search also has access to another level of representation, one that describes properties in the corresponding three-dimensional scene. Among (...) these properties are three dimensionality and the direction of lighting, but not viewing direction. These findings imply that the parallel processes of early vision are much more sophisticated than previously assumed. (shrink)

It has generally been assumed that rapid visual search is based on simple features and that spatial relations between features are irrelevant for this task. Seven experiments involving search for line drawings contradict this assumption; a major determinant of search is the presence of line junctions. Arrow- and Y-junctions were detected rapidly in isolation and when they were embedded in drawings of rectangular polyhedra. Search for T-junctions was considerably slower. Drawings containing T-junctions often gave rise to very slow search even (...) when distinguishing arrow- or Y-junctions were present. This sensitivity to line relations suggests that preattentive processes can extract 3-dimensional orientation from line drawings. A computational model is outlined for how this may be accomplished in early human vision. (shrink)

Previous theories of early vision have assumed that visual search is based on simple two-dimensional aspects of an image, such as the orientation of edges and lines. It is shown here that search can also be based on three-dimensional orientation of objects in the corresponding scene, provided that these objects are simple convex blocks. Direct comparison shows that image-based and scene-based orientation are similar in their ability to facilitate search. These findings support the hypothesis that scene-based properties are represented at (...) preattentive levels in early vision. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience implicate reentrant signaling as the predominant form of communication between brain areas. This principle was used in a series of masking experiments that defy explanation by feed-forward theories. The masking occurs when a brief display of target plus mask is continued with the mask alone. Two masking processes were found: an early process affected by physical factors such as adapting luminance and a later process affected by attentional factors such as set size. This later process is called (...) masking by object substitution, because it occurs whenever there is a mismatch between the reentrant visual representation and the ongoing lower level activity. Iterative reentrant processing was formalized in a computational model that provides an excellent fit to the data. The model provides a more comprehensive account of all forms of visual masking than do the long-held feed-forward views based on inhibitory contour interactions. (shrink)

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple spatial filters at (...) early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on earth—that the post-mortem body will be numerically identical to the pre-mortem body. After exegetically supporting this claim, and defending it from a recent objection, we ask: supposing that the doctrine of the resurrection is true, what are the implications for the mind-body relation? Why would God resurrect the body that lived and died on earth? We compare three accounts of the mind-body relation that (...) have been applied to the doctrine of the resurrection: substance dualism, constitutionalism, and animalism. We argue that animalism offers a superior explanation for the necessity of the resurrection: since human persons just are their bodies, life after death requires resurrection of one’s body. We conclude that those endorsing the doctrine of the resurrection should be animalists. (shrink)

A modified visual search task demonstrates that humans are very good at resuming a search after it has been momentarily interrupted. This is shown by exceptionally rapid response time to a display that reappears after a brief interruption, even when an entirely different visual display is seen during the interruption and two different visual searches are performed simultaneously. This rapid resumption depends on the stability of the visual scene and is not due to display or response anticipations. These results are (...) consistent with the existence of an iterative hypothesis-testing mechanism that compares information stored in short-term memory (the perceptual hypothesis) with information about the display (the sensory pattern). In this view, rapid resumption occurs because a hypothesis based on a previous glance of the scene can be tested very rapidly in a subsequent glance, given that the initial hypothesis-generation step has already been performed. (shrink)

I begin by sketching the Epicurean position on death - that it cannot be bad for the one who dies because she no longer exists - which has struck many people as specious. However, alternative views must specify who is wronged by death (the dead person?), what is the harm (suffering?), and when does the harm take place (before death, when you’re not dead yet, or after death, when you’re not around any more?). In the second section I outline the (...) most sophisticated anti-Epicurean view, the deprivation account, according to which someone who dies is harmed to the extent that the death has deprived her of goods she would otherwise have had. In the third section I argue that deprivation accounts that use the philosophical tool of possible worlds have the counterintuitive implication that we are harmed in the actual world because counterfactual versions of us lead fantastic lives in other possible worlds. In the final section I outline a neo-Epicurean position that explains how one can be wronged by being killed without being harmed by death and how it is possible to defend intuitions about injustice without problematic appeal to possible worlds. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

Culture is a notoriously elusive concept. This fact has done nothing to hinder its popularity in contemporary analytic political philosophy among writers like John Rawls, Will Kymlicka, Michael Walzer, David Miller, Iris Marion Young, Joseph Raz, Avishai Margalit and Bikhu Parekh, among many others. However, this should stop, both for the metaphysical reason that the concept of culture, like that of race, is itself either incoherent or lacking a referent in reality, and for several normative reasons. I focus on the (...) following interconnected points: • The vagueness of the term allows a myriad of candidates to claim rights, and typically to the detriment of increased equality and environmental goals . • Cultural capital cannot be regulated in the way that political capital must be regulated without undermining the cultures supposedly being protected. And the possession of cultural capital is almost never democratically regulated. In particular, granting cultures political status creates intergenerational conflict, rewarding the elders and creating incentives to be conservative and restrict cultural mobility of the younger generation. •The notion of a group owning “its” culture is conceptually suspect and corrupted by the foregoing points about unequal cultural capital. In defending a group’s right to preserve its culture we do not defend equally the rights of the individuals that make it up , and we ignore altogether the rights of those who may be unfairly denied recognition as “members” of the culture. (shrink)

“Physical premotion” is a concept associated with Baroque Catholic theological debates concerning grace and freedom. In this paper, I present an argument that the entities identified in this debate, physical premotions, are necessary for any classical theist’s account of divine causality. A “classical theist” is a theist who holds both that God is simple, that is, without inhering properties, and that humans and God are both free in the incompatibilist sense. In fact, not only does the acceptance of physical premotions (...) not entail determinism, physical premotions are the only way for classical theists to preserve the aforementioned two commitments. Nevertheless, the theory of premotions cannot help theologians resolve questions of how God causes human free acts without violating their freedom. (shrink)

Why are natural theories pre-well-ordered by consistency strength? In previous work, an approach to this question was proposed. This approach was inspired by Martin's Conjecture, one of the most prominent conjectures in recursion theory. Fixing a reasonable subsystem $T$ of arithmetic, the goal was to classify the recursive functions that are monotone with respect to the Lindenbaum algebra of $T$. According to an optimistic conjecture, roughly, every such function must be equivalent to an iterate $\mathsf{Con}_T^\alpha$ of the consistency operator ``in (...) the limit'' within the ultrafilter of sentences that are true in the standard model. In previous work the author established the first case of this optimistic conjecture; roughly, every recursive monotone function is either as weak as the identity operator in the limit or as strong as $\mathsf{Con}_T$ in the limit. Yet in this note we prove that this optimistic conjecture fails already at the next step; there are recursive monotone functions that are neither as weak as $\mathsf{Con}_T$ in the limit nor as strong as $\mathsf{Con}_T^2$ in the limit. In fact, for every $\alpha$, we produce a function that is cofinally equivalent to $\mathsf{Con}^\alpha_T$ yet cofinally equivalent to $\mathsf{Con}_T$. (shrink)

By far the most respected response by theists to the problem of evil is some version of the free will defense, which rests on the twin ideas that God could not create humans with free will without them committing evil acts, and that freedom is of such value that it is better that we have it than that we be perfect yet unfree. If we assume that the redeemed in heaven are impeccable, then the free will defense faces what I (...) call the Heaven Dilemma: either the redeemed in heaven are free, in which case it is false that you cannot be free without doing evil, or they are not, in which case (heaven being better than earth) it is false that we are better off with freedom and evil than without either. James Sennett has tried to defend a view of freedom that effectively allows us to be impeccable in heaven so long as we are not on earth, while claiming that we are free in both. I argue that this view leads to a new dilemma: either there is no point to earth at all, and given its miseries, it is wrong for God to make us pass through it to get to heaven (especially if we face the risk of ending up in hell), or Sennett’s view consigns millions who die tragically young to an eternity of unfreedom. (shrink)

I bet you don’t practice your philosophical intuitions. What’s your excuse? If you think philosophical training improves the reliability of philosophical intuitions, then practicing intuitions should improve them even further. I argue that philosophers’ reluctance to practice their intuitions highlights a tension in the way that they think about the role of intuitions in philosophy.

According to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she’s entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one’s knowledge that p. That’s why one (...) can’t rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called ‘the defeat solution’. Maria Lasonen-Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it doesn’t rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls ‘Entitlement’ (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser. (shrink)

In this review, we describe some of the central philosophical issues facing origins-of-life research and provide a targeted history of the developments that have led to the multidisciplinary field of origins-of-life studies. We outline these issues and developments to guide researchers and students from all fields. With respect to philosophy, we provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory (...) of life, (2) the distinctions between synthetic, historical, and universal projects in origins-of-life studies, issues with strategies for inferring the origins of life, such as (3) the nature of the first living entities (the “bottom up” approach) and (4) how to infer the nature of the last universal common ancestor (the “top down” approach), and (5) the status of origins of life as a science. Each of these debates influences the others. Although there are clusters of researchers that agree on some answers to these issues, each of these debates is still open. With respect to history, we outline several independent paths that have led to some of the approaches now prevalent in origins-of-life studies. These include one path from early views of life through the scientific revolutions brought about by Linnaeus (von Linn.), Wöhler, Miller, and others. In this approach, new theories, tools, and evidence guide new thoughts about the nature of life and its origin.We also describe another family of paths motivated by a” circularity” approach to life, which is guided by such thinkers as Maturana & Varela, Gánti, Rosen, and others. These views echo ideas developed by Kant and Aristotle, though they do so using modern science in ways that produce exciting avenues of investigation. By exploring the history of these ideas, we can see how many of the issues that currently interest us have been guided by the contexts in which the ideas were developed. The disciplinary backgrounds of each of these scholars has influenced the questions they sought to answer, the experiments they envisioned, and the kinds of data they collected. We conclude by encouraging scientists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore ways in which they can interact to provide a deeper understanding of the conceptual assumptions, structure, and history of origins-of-life research. This may be useful to help frame future research agendas and bring awareness to the multifaceted issues facing this challenging scientific question. (shrink)

This chapter offers an interpretation of Roger Ames' use of the field-focus ontology, tying the topic to Daoist meditation practices.

The COVID-19 has had a significant impact on people's lives and business operations around the world. Additionally, it has an effect on the purchasing habits of the Filipino youth. The researchers employed a qualitative research technique in this study to determine changes in the purchasing behavior of Filipino youth, specifically young adults aged 18-25 in Metro Manila. Our findings indicate that young Filipinos have become significantly interested in digital commerce in the country, a trend that has been growing consistently since (...) the pandemic started. Since the pandemic began, they have valued the effeciency and convenience of making purchases thru online platforms. As a result, many individuals chose to support local businesses by downloading apps or visiting websites that enable them to purchase online. According to the findings of the study, many of the respondents said that they prioritized buying necessities over wants. Because money was tight due to the lockdowns, which caused the majority of Filipinos to lose their jobs or stop working, Filipinos were careful with their expenditures throughout the pandemic. We the researchers concluded based on the responses we got thru our online interviews, that the pandemic indeed impacted the buying behavior of the Filipino youth. (shrink)

This paper defends the usefulness of the concept of philosophical progress and the common assumption that philosophy and science aim to make the same, or a comparable, kind of progress. It does so by responding to Yafeng Shan's (2022) arguments that the wealth of research on scientific progress is not applicable or useful to philosophy, and that philosophy doesn't need a concept of progress at all. It is ultimately argued that while Shan's arguments are not successful, they reveal the way (...) forward in developing accounts of philosophical progress. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that writers on metaphor have misunderstood Aristotle on metaphor. Aristotle is not an elitist about metaphor and does not consider metaphors to be merely ornamental. Rather, Aristotle believes that metaphors are ubiquitous and believes that people can express themselves in a clearer and more attractive way through the use of metaphors and that people learn and understand things better through metaphor. He also distinguishes between the use of metaphor and the coinage of metaphor, and believes (...) that the ability to coin marvelous new metaphors is a form of literary genius, and he provided an entirely natural origin of metaphor coinage. (shrink)

Let serious propositional contingentism (SPC) be the package of views which consists in (i) the thesis that propositions expressed by sentences featuring terms depend, for their existence, on the existence of the referents of those terms, (ii) serious actualism—the view that it is impossible for an object to exemplify a property and not exist—and (iii) contingentism—the view that it is at least possible that some thing might not have been something. SPC is popular and compelling. But what should we say (...) about possible worlds, if we accept SPC? Here, I first show that a natural view of possible worlds, well-represented in the literature, in conjunction with SPC is inadequate. Though I note various alternative ways of thinking about possible worlds in response to the first problem, I then outline a second more general problem—a master argument—which generally shows that any account of possible worlds meeting very minimal requirements will be inconsistent with compelling claims about _mere possibilia_ which the serious propositional contingentist should accept. (shrink)

A reorientation is needed in methodological debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy. Methodological debate has lost sight of the reason why it makes sense to focus on questions about intuitions when thinking about the methods or epistemology of philosophy. The problem is an approach to methodology that focuses almost exclusively on questions about some evidential role that intuitions may or may not play in philosophers’ arguments. A new approach is needed. Approaching methodological questions about the role of intuitions (...) in philosophy with an abductive model of philosophical inquiry in mind will help ensure the debate doesn't lose sight of what motivates the debate. (shrink)

In some cases, a group of people can bring about a morally bad outcome despite each person’s individual act making no difference with respect to bringing that outcome about. Since each person’s act makes no difference, it seems the effects of the act cannot provide a reason not to perform it. This is problematic, because if each person acts in accordance with their reasons, each will presumably perform the act—and thus, the bad outcome will be brought about. Recently, Julia Nefsky (...) has argued that this problem is solved by rejecting the assumption that if an act makes no difference with respect to an outcome, then the act cannot do anything non-superfluous toward bringing that outcome about. Nefsky suggests that, even if an act makes no difference, the act may nevertheless help: it may make a non-superfluous causal contribution. If this is right, it means that the potential effects of an act may give us a reason to perform the act, even if the act wouldn’t make a difference. In this paper, I offer some reasons to be wary of Nefsky’s approach. I first argue that her account generates problematic results in a certain range of cases, and thus that we may have no reason to help in any case. I then argue that, even if we do sometimes have a reason to act when it seems we cannot make a difference, this reason cannot be the one that Nefsky identifies. (shrink)

Legal philosophy dates to the Ancient Greek Philosophers, and it continues to be a vigorously debated subject due to the fact that there does not exist a legal philosophy that is beyond reapproach that encapsulates law’s origins or purpose. This paper will introduce a new legal philosophy, which I have termed instinctualism. -/- Instinctualism is the idea that law originates from human instinct. Human beings are born with certain natural capacities that they learn to utilize as they mature. Examples include (...) speaking, walking, associating, and interacting with others, and practicing faith in a divine being, the state, or some other source of inspiration and hope. Human beings don’t think about the potential illegalities of speaking their minds, moving from one place to another, or engaging in conversation with their friends or associates unless they are indoctrinated to do so. Rather, human beings do these things because they have instinctual desires and the knowledge to do so. Other rights and laws such as freedom of the press are the product of peoples’ instinctual rights. For example, as people learn to speak, they instinctually share information and news about their inner circles or communities. If taken a step further, one begins to discuss an organized press. Knowledge and understanding of laws, such as those limiting certain types of speech, i.e., hate speech, must be taught and learned; it is not instinctual. -/- This paper will introduce a subset of the most influential legal philosophies of different eras in human intellectual development, beginning with those of Ancient Greece. It will proceed to describe the shortcomings of those philosophies before introducing instinctualism as an alternative. After defining instinctualism, I will proceed to discuss how it addresses the shortcomings of other legal philosophies. Next, I will introduce rights guaranteed to the citizens of four prominent countries via relevant sources of primary law for each of those countries. Finally, I will close by reviewing the main arguments in the paper and discussing future research that I will undertake to buttress this paper’s arguments. (shrink)

Do philosophers use intuitions? Should philosophers use intuitions? Can philosophical methods (where intuitions are concerned) be improved upon? In order to answer these questions we need to have some idea of how we should go about answering them. I defend a way of going about methodology of intuitions: a metamethodology. I claim the following: (i) we should approach methodological questions about intuitions with a thin conception of intuitions in mind; (ii) we should carve intuitions finely; and, (iii) we should carve (...) to a grain to which we are sensitive in our everyday philosophising. The reason is that, unless we do so, we don’t get what we want from philosophical methodology. I argue that what we want is information that will aid us in formulating practical advice concerning how to do philosophy responsibly/well/better. (shrink)

Various studies have reported that moral intuitions about the permissibility of acts are subject to framing effects. This paper reports the results of a series of experiments which further examine the susceptibility of moral intuitions to framing effects. The main aim was to test recent speculation that intuitions about the moral relevance of certain properties of cases might be relatively resistent to framing effects. If correct, this would provide a certain type of moral intuitionist with the resources to resist challenges (...) to the reliability of moral intuitions based on such framing effects. And, fortunately for such intuitionists, although the results can’t be used to mount a strident defence of intuitionism, the results do serve to shift the burden of proof onto those who would claim that intuitions about moral relevance are problematically sensitive to framing effects. (shrink)

It is well known that the following features hold of AR + T under the strong Kleene scheme, regardless of the way the language is Gödel numbered: 1. There exist sentences that are neither paradoxical nor grounded. 2. There are 2ℵ0 fixed points. 3. In the minimal fixed point the weakly definable sets (i.e., sets definable as {n∣ A(n) is true in the minimal fixed point where A(x) is a formula of AR + T) are precisely the Π1 1 sets. (...) 4. In the minimal fixed point the totally defined sets (sets weakly defined by formulae all of whose instances are true or false) are precisely the ▵1 1 sets. 5. The closure ordinal for Kripke's construction of the minimal fixed point is ωCK 1. In contrast, we show that under the weak Kleene scheme, depending on the way the Gödel numbering is chosen: 1. There may or may not exist nonparadoxical, ungrounded sentences. 2. The number of fixed points may be any positive finite number, ℵ0, or 2ℵ0 . 3. In the minimal fixed point, the sets that are weakly definable may range from a subclass of the sets 1-1 reducible to the truth set of AR to the Π1 1 sets, including intermediate cases. 4. Similarly, the totally definable sets in the minimal fixed point range from precisely the arithmetical sets up to precisely the ▵1 1 sets. 5. The closure ordinal for the construction of the minimal fixed point may be ω, ωCK 1, or any successor limit ordinal in between. In addition we suggest how one may supplement AR + T with a function symbol interpreted by a certain primitive recursive function so that, irrespective of the choice of the Godel numbering, the resulting language based on the weak Kleene scheme has the five features noted above for the strong Kleene language. (shrink)

On a number of occasions in Plato’s dialogues Socrates appears to disavow all knowledge. At Apology 21d, for example, Socrates says of one of his interlocutors: ‘He, having no knowledge, thinks he knows something, while I, having none, don’t think I have any,’ On other occasions, however, Socrates does claim to know some things: ‘It is not a mere guess to say that knowledge and right opinion are different. There are few things I would claim to know, but that at (...) least is among them, whatever else is’ (Meno 98b). Gregory Vlastos has sought to show that Socrates did not contradict himself but operated on the basis of two different senses of ‘know’: ‘know in the sense of having certainty’ and ‘know on the basis of elenctic examination.’ I argue against Vlastos’ interpretation and propose instead that Socrates claimed to know various things, but not the essential nature of virtue. (shrink)

Complete information dispositional metasemantics says that our expressions get their meaning in virtue of what our dispositions to apply those terms would be given complete information. The view has recently been advanced and argued to have a number of attractive features. I argue that that it threatens to make the meanings of our words indeterminate and doesn’t do what it was that made a dispositional view attractive in the first place.

Decadence in philosophy means evaluating truth claims exclusively in terms of provocation, in terms of how vigorously they generate subsequent thought. The best truth/book/essay/video doesn’t settle questions, but produces still more thought, writing, production. -/- Decadence privileges the history of thinking over the history of truth. Thought’s history runs from base servility (the best thinking eliminates the need for itself by culminating in universal truth, Platonism), to dialectical servility (the ceaseless interplay of interpretation as a verb, and as a noun, (...) Nietzscheanism), to decadence, where thought overthrows truth’s independent value and incorporates assertions into its own expression and acceleration. -/- Decadence is defined as truth serving thought, and practiced when the only reason we have truths is to generate more thinking. While the definition structures well historically, the claim in Decadence of the French Nietzsche is not that there are serial epochs – Platonism followed by Nietzscheanism followed by Decadence – but that an esoteric vein of decadence runs through philosophy’s history. (shrink)

P. T. Geach has argued that it is impossible to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity is consistent. I try to show why -- on a common understanding of the notion of consistency -- his reasoning is flawed and why, on Geach’s own principles, one should expect that if the doctrine of the Trinity is true then it will be possible to prove that the doctrine is consistent, and it will be possible to do this in a way that (...) makes no appeal to the truth of any religious doctrine. (shrink)

I will argue that the Kane-Widerker objection to Frankfurt examples is much weaker than is generally recognized. The Kane-Widerker objection holds that proponents of Frankfurt examples beg the question against incompatibilist accounts of free and responsible action by constructing examples that tacitly assume a compatibilist account of moral responsibility; that is, they assume that one can have non-derivative responsibility for choices that were not undetermined prior to their occurrence. The notion of an event, E, being ‘undetermined prior to its occurrence’ (...) is ambiguous. It can mean either (1) with respect to each time t prior to E’s occurrence, it is not the case that at t E’s occurrence is determined to take place, or it can mean (2) with respect to the whole collection of times prior to E’s occurrence, E’s occurrence is not determined to take place. Kane’s argument shows that (under certain constraints) if a choice is to be undetermined (in the second sense) prior to its occurrence, then a prior-sign Frankfurt example cannot be successful. But he fails to show that prior-sign Frankfurt examples cannot be constructed in which the choice is undetermined (in the first sense) prior to its occurrence, and he would need to do so in order to sustain his charge that those using Frankfurt examples beg the question against traditional incompatibilist accounts of responsibility. Widerker’s argument avoids the above problem, but at the cost of only applying to a rather restricted set of Frankfurt examples. (shrink)

While there are numerous differences between the approaches taken by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and James J. Gibson, the basic motivation of the two thinkers, as well as the internal logic of their respective views, is extraordinarily close. Both were guided throughout their lives by an attempt to overcome the dualism of subject and object, and both devoted considerable attention to their "Gestaltist" predecessors. There can be no doubt but that it is largely because of this common cause that the subsequent (...) development of their ideas is so similar. It is not my objective in what follows merely to demonstrate a similarity between two lines of thought. Instead, I will try to show that each approach gains considerably from attention to the other. There are numerous ways to begin such a project, each about as arbitrary as the next. For present purposes, I shall take as of central importance the question of the character of the perceived world, both in relation to the traditionally opposed mental and material "substances", and in relation to its identification and individuation of things vis a vis one another and vis a vis ourselves. This will implicate especially Gibson's "affordances" and Merleau-Ponty's thesis concerning the "materiality of meaning.". (shrink)

Learning to see the continuity between our everyday decision-making and our decision-making around new biotechnologies is key to acclimatizing to our enhanced future. By excavating this decision-making, Singh helps us see that Ritalin isn’t really that big a deal and helps dispel what Malcolm Gladwell (1999) noted as the “strange inversion of moral responsibility” encouraged by books like ‘Ritalin Nation’ and ‘Running on Ritalin,’ whose authors “seek to make those parents and physicians trying to help children with A.D.H.D. feel guilty (...) for doing so.”. (shrink)

In ‘Burnt Norton’, the first of his ‘four quartets’, Eliot selected two Heraclitus’ fragments as epigraphs. In quoting fragment B 60 (‘the way up and the way down are one and the same’) he was reminding his readers that entrance into a spiritual life calls for both engagement and withdrawal, for both descending and ascending. And in quoting B 2 he reaffirmed Heraclitus’ conviction that most people fail to recognize the truth even when it is directly presented to them. In (...) his later Cocktail Party Eliot revisited these themes by converting a depiction of a failed social gathering into an exploration of forms of authenticity. He also exploited the dual nature of the Heraclitean daimôn—as external overseer and as the soul which lies within each person—to transform an account of a gathering of friends and strangers into an extended reflection on the conflicts lying within each human soul. (shrink)

This study forms a part of a larger investigation of the influence of the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus on modern poetry. T. S. Eliot, to mention the best known of the many poets inspired by Heraclitus, selected two Heraclitus fragments (B 2 and B 60) as epigraphs for his “Burnt Norton”, the first of his Four Quartets. Eliot explained that he was drawn to the fragments because of their ‘ambiguity’ and ‘extraordinary poetic suggestiveness’. Similarly, in ‘This Solitude of Cataracts’, (...) Wallace Stevens spoke of ‘the flecked river which kept flowing and never the same way twice’ and elsewhere noted the ‘inherently poetic quality’ of many Heraclitean sayings. To gain some sense of the nature and magnitude of Heraclitus’ legacy for modern poetry we must first explore his vision of ‘a fiery cosmos being kindled in measures and extinguished in measures’ and a river into which one cannot step twice. -/- . (shrink)

Some courses achieve existence, some have to create Professional Issues and Ethics in existence thrust upon them. It is normally Mathematics; but if you don’t do it, we will a struggle to create a course on the ethical be.” I accepted. or social aspects of science or mathematics. The gift of a greenfield site and a bull- This is the story of one that was forced to dozer is a happy occasion, undoubtedly. But exist by an unusual confluence of outside (...) cirwhat to do next? It seemed to me I should cumstances. ensure the course satisfied these require- In the mid 1990s, the University of New ments: South Wales instituted a policy that all its • It should look good to students, to staff. (shrink)

Originally published in 1991, The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences, is the first monograph to identify and address some of the many interesting questions that pertain to thought experiments. While the putative aim of the book is to explore the nature of thought experimental evidence, it has another important purpose which concerns the crucial role thought experiments play in Brown’s Platonic master argument.In that argument, Brown argues against naturalism and empiricism (Brown 2012), for mathematical Platonism (...) (Brown 2008), and from the Platonist-friendly, abstract universals posited by the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong (DTA) account of the laws of nature to a more general, physical Platonism. The Laboratory of the Mind is where he takes this final step. (shrink)

• It would be a moral disgrace for God (if he existed) to allow the many evils in the world, in the same way it would be for a parent to allow a nursery to be infested with criminals who abused the children. • There is a contradiction in asserting all three of the propositions: God is perfectly good; God is perfectly powerful; evil exists (since if God wanted to remove the evils and could, he would). • The religious believer (...) has no hope of getting away with excuses that evil is not as bad as it seems, or that it is all a result of free will, and so on. Piper avoids mentioning the best solution so far put forward to the problem of evil. It is Leibniz’s theory that God does not create a better world because there isn’t one — that is, that (contrary to appearances) if one part of the world were improved, the ramifications would result in it being worse elsewhere, and worse overall. It is a “bump in the carpet” theory: push evil down here, and it pops up over there. Leibniz put it by saying this is the “Best of All Possible Worlds”. That phrase was a public relations disaster for his theory, suggesting as it does that everything is perfectly fine as it is. He does not mean that, but only that designing worlds is a lot harder than it looks, and determining the amount of evil in the best one is no easy matter. Though humour is hardly appropriate to the subject matter, the point of Leibniz’s idea is contained in the old joke, “An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist thinks.. (shrink)

Interest in "embodiment", and over how one may best express the implications of embodiment, is no parochial question, of interest only to a small number of effete philosophers. It confronts perceptual psychologists, developmental psychologists, and psychotherapists, of course. It may not be surprising, either, that it has become an important issue to some students of history and sociology, and to linguists, literary theorists and aestheticians. But that's not all. As physicists -- working within the very bastion of "objective" analysis -- (...) have tried to find expression for what seems to be going on in the domain of sub-atomic nature, they have begun to suggest that physical description itself is inevitably situated. And within the study of artificial intelligence, support is growing for the contention that intelligence cannot be understood entirely formalistically. Intelligence must at least be embodied -- it must somehow display "engaged agency" -- if it is to be recognizable as intelligence. It is within this context that the contribution offered by this essay must be understood. I shall contend that a particular conception -- that of "affordances" -- can, when suitably qualified, offer a conceptual tool of quite exceptional value in the construction of a positive theory of embodied agency, and of its philosophical consequences. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the common claim that vicious forms of argumentative practice, like interpersonal arrogance and discursive polarisation, are caused by martial metaphors, such as ARGUMENT AS WAR. I argue that the problem isn’t the metaphor, but our wider practices of metaphorising and the ways they are deformed by invidious cultural biases and prejudices. Drawing on feminist argumentation theory, I argue that misogynistic cultures distort practices of metaphorising in two ways. First, they spotlight some associations between the martial and argumentative (...) domains while occluding others, resulting in a sort of myopia. Second, those cultures interfere with a phenomenon I label normative isomorphism – the capacity of some structural metaphors to enable (and often encourage) a transfer of normative chracater traits from the source domain to the target domain. Crucially, the normative status of character trait often changes across domains—traits that are virtuous in the martial domain are often vicious in the argumentative domain, and vice versa. Sexist myopia tends to deform practices of metaphorising by interfering with normative isomorphism by privileging the transfer across domains of traits that recapitulate invidious cultural constructions of masculinity in terms of aggression, domination, and violence. Basically, the problem isn’t the metaphors, but the cultures. (shrink)

Is self-knowledge a requirement of rationality, like consistency, or means-ends coherence? Many claim so, citing the evident impropriety of asserting, and the alleged irrationality of believing, Moore-paradoxical propositions of the form < p, but I don't believe that p>. If there were nothing irrational about failing to know one's own beliefs, they claim, then there would be nothing irrational about Moore-paradoxical assertions or beliefs. This article considers a few ways the data surrounding Moore's paradox might be marshaled to support rational (...) requirements to know one's beliefs, and finds that none succeed. (shrink)

Cyber bullying affects many adolescents and teens on a daily basis; it is a form of violence that can do lasting harm to people at different ages and social status in a society. Cyber bullying is real experience that has been in existence for a quite a long time; Bullying statistics show that cyber bullying is a serious problem among teens and gaining roots among adults. By being more aware of cyber bullying, teens and adults can help to fight it. (...) Cyber bullying involves using technology, like cell phones and the Internet, to bully or harass another person. The introduction of social media and other communication systems has seen several people being bullied online by those who are already proficient on the platforms. The reasons behind cyber bullying might or might not be mala-fide but its existence isn’t in the best interest. It has been looked at mainly from the teens’ effect both in physical and psychological perception not realizing that adults are also equally affected. The impact on adults comes in different forms and has serious impact on the families and work places. The impact at work places affects productivity due to psychological trauma, legal involvement, shame/embarrassment whenever it goes public. Some people have gone to point of resigning from jobs, others have buried themselves into work for fear of victimization, others have committed suicide - At whatever level of status in society there is a great repercussion that is if situation is not put under control the victim can easily go down to a total down trend. Cyber bullying has fatal consequences and existing laws about it are woefully lacking despite some legal measures having been put in place but it gets tricky especially if the cyber bully is anonymous. There are cybercrime cells that help in preventing cyber bullying or minimize the happenings to set up a good working environment that may increase individual productivity and increase organisations profits. (shrink)

Self-verifying judgments like _I exist_ seem rational, and self-defeating ones like _It will rain, but I don’t believe it will rain_ seem irrational_._ But one’s evidence might support a self-defeating judgment, and fail to support a self-verifying one. This paper explains how it can be rational to defy one’s evidence if judgment is construed as a mental performance or act, akin to inner assertion. The explanation comes at significant cost, however. Instead of causing or constituting beliefs, judgments turn out to (...) be mere epiphenomena, and self-verification and self-defeat lack the broader philosophical import often claimed for them. (shrink)

Pragmatists, as I understand them, have their own view of what truth and progress are. William James, quite famously, offered a straightforward pragmatic definition of truth. In rejecting in general the idea of truth, Richard Rorty indicates thereby a rejection of this part of the pragmatic tradition. Perhaps Professor Rorty can clarify, in his response, what stops a pragmatist -- armed with the pragmatic definition of truth -- from saying that progress toward the truth was made (for example) through (...) the Copernican revolution in astronomy. (shrink)

Each of the standard outlooks in the philosophy of perception --phenomenalism, direct realism, indirect realism, scepticism -- has thus been viewed as Hume's own considered position in the eyes of informed commentators. I argue that Hume does not ascribe univocally to any one of the traditional stances in the philosophy of perception, nor does he leave us only a schizophrenic or 'mood' scepticism. Hume attempted to resolve the traditional philosophical problem (or perhaps more accurately, to set it aside on principled (...) grounds) by transforming the issue from one of theoretical consistency to one of pragmatic coherence. Hume's moderate scepticism and his systematic naturalism entail a reflective 'return' to the vulgar (cp. T 223), a qualified normative endorsement of the directly realist beliefs of common life. The interpretive challenge is to understand the subtle nature of that endorsement, and to explain how it arises out of genuinely Humean doctrines. The account offered here attempts both to capture Hume's own considered position and to explain the attractions and shortcomings of each of the competing interpretations. After laying out the elements of Hume's account of perceptual belief (section I), I proceed to examine in some detail two recent attempts to interpret Hume as a realist (sections II-III). I contend that these revisionary accounts ascribe unHumean doctrines to Hume. The interpretation of Hume as an irreducible 'mood' sceptic or as a phenomenalist are in that respect both closer to the mark, but Hume's reflective return to the vulgar has recast the nature of the problem and leaves us with a position that is not reflected in the more traditional interpretations (section IV). (shrink)

I argue that the most promising approach to understanding J.J. Gibson's "affordances" takes affordances themselves as ontological primitives, instead of treating them as dispositional properties of more primitive things, events, surfaces, or substances. These latter are best treated as coalescences of affordances present in the environment (or "coalescences of use-potential," as in Sanders (1994) and Hilditch (1995)). On this view, even the ecological approach's stress on the complementary organism/environment pair is seen as expressing a particular affordance relation between the world (...) and the analyst. That the world is parsed in any way among events and objects, perceivers and worlds, etc., reflects equally features of certain real or possible perspectives on the world and features of the world itself. In section 1, I begin by contending that, contrary to the apparent expectations of some in the field, the bare existence of affordances is surely quite uncontroversial. In section 2, I argue that the most reasonable approach to foundational ontology is a relativistic one. In section 3, I address the claim that affordances must be ontologically complemented by effectivities for the sake of completeness, and I shall argue against that claim on grounds that I take to reflect some of Gibson's most important insights. This work will help to clarify the way affordances are to be used in the fourth and final section, where I argue that ontological work, even within special sciences, should not be merely "regional," and that the most attractive general approach to ontological questions is one that is based on affordances, rather than upon things, events, surfaces, and the like. (shrink)