Waiting time is widely used in health and social policy to make resource allocation decisions, yet no general account of the moral significance of waiting time exists. We provide such an account. We argue that waiting time is not intrinsically morally significant, and that the first person in a queue for a resource does not ipso facto have a right to receive that resource first. However, waiting time can and sometimes should play a role in justifying allocation decisions. First, there (...) is a duty of fairness prohibiting line-cutting where a sufficiently just queue exists. Second, waiting time has several morally attractive features that can justify its incorporation into allocation schemes. Where candidates are in relevantly similar circumstances, allocating by waiting time is relatively efficient, maximizes distribution equality relative to other Pareto efficient distributions, and treats candidates fairly. The claim that allocation using waiting time is fair is controversial. Some have claimed that formal lotteries are a fairer way to select among equal beneficiaries. We argue that lotteries are no fairer than allocation based on waiting time when it is equiprobable how a prospective queue will be ordered. In practice, lotteries share many of the disadvantages of queues; which is fairer will depend on contingent features of the allocation scenario. The upshot is that first-come, first-served is in fact a just way to allocate resources in many of the cases where it seems pre-theoretically compelling, and waiting time has unique normative properties which frequently justify its incorporation into resource allocation schemes. (shrink)

This article accomplishes two closely connected things. First, it refutes an influential view about the relationship between perception and knowledge. In particular, it demonstrates that perceiving does not entail knowing. Second, it leverages that refutation to demonstrate that knowledge is not the most general factive propositional attitude.

Certain passages in Kaplan’s ‘Demonstratives’ are often taken to show that non-vacuous sentential operators associated with a certain parameter of sentential truth require a corresponding relativism concerning assertoric contents: namely, their truth values also must vary with that parameter. Thus, for example, the non-vacuity of a temporal sentential operator ‘always’ would require some of its operands to have contents that have different truth values at different times. While making no claims about Kaplan’s intentions, we provide several reconstructions of how such (...) an argument might go, focusing on the case of time and temporal operators as an illustration. What we regard as the most plausible reconstruction of the argument establishes a conclusion similar enough to that attributed to Kaplan. However, the argument overgenerates, leading to absurd consequences. We conclude that we must distinguish assertoric contents from compositional semantic values, and argue that once they are distinguished, the argument fails to establish any substantial conclusions. We also briefly discuss a related argument commonly attributed to Lewis, and a recent variant due to Weber. (shrink)

One widely used method for allocating health care resources involves the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to rank treatments in terms of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained. CEA has been criticized for discriminating against people with disabilities by valuing their lives less than those of non-disabled people. Avoiding discrimination seems to lead to the ’QALY trap’: we cannot value saving lives equally and still value raising quality of life. This paper reviews existing responses to the QALY trap and argues that all (...) are problematic. Instead, we argue that adopting a moderate form of prioritarianism avoids the QALY trap and disability discrimination. (shrink)

Research on the human microbiome has gen- erated a staggering amount of sequence data, revealing variation in microbial diversity at the community, species (or phylotype), and genomic levels. In order to make this complexity more manageable and easier to interpret, new units—the metagenome, core microbiome, and entero- type—have been introduced in the scientific literature. Here, I argue that analytical tools and exploratory statisti- cal methods, coupled with a translational imperative, are the primary drivers of this new ontology. By reducing the (...) dimensionality of variation in the human microbiome, these new units render it more tractable and easier to interpret, and hence serve an important heuristic role. Nonetheless, there are several reasons to be cautious about these new categories prematurely ‘‘hardening’’ into natural units: a lack of constraints on what can be sequenced metagenomically, freedom of choice in taxonomic level in defining a ‘‘core microbiome,’’ typological framing of some of the concepts, and possible reification of statistical constructs. Finally, lessons from the Human Genome Project have led to a translational imperative: a drive to derive results from the exploration of microbiome variation that can help to articulate the emerging paradigm of per- sonalized genomic medicine (PGM). There is a tension between the typologizing inherent in much of this research and the personal in PGM. (shrink)

Experiences of embodied remembering are familiar and diverse. We settle bodily into familiar chairs or find our way easily round familiar rooms. We inhabit our own kitchens or cars or workspaces effectively and comfortably, and feel disrupted when our habitual and accustomed objects or technologies change or break or are not available. Hearing a particular song can viscerally bring back either one conversation long ago, or just the urge to dance. Some people explicitly use their bodies to record, store, or (...) cue memories. Others can move skilfully, without stopping to think, in complex and changing environments thanks to the cumulative expertise accrued in their history of fighting fires, or dancing, or playing hockey. The forms of memory involved in these cases may be distinct, operating at different timescales and levels, and by way of different mechanisms and media, but they often cooperate in the many contexts of our practices of remembering. (shrink)

Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

Remembering is one of the most characteristic and most puzzling of human activities. Personal memory, in particular – the ability mentally to travel back into the past, as leading psychologist Endel Tulving puts it – often has intense emotional or moral significance: it is perhaps the most striking manifestation of the peculiar way human beings are embedded in time, and of our limited but genuine freedom from our present environment and our immediate needs. Memory has been significant in the history (...) of philosophy as much in relation to ethics and to epistemology as in theories of psyche, mind, and self. (shrink)

Rape and sexual assault are major problems. In the majority of sexual assault cases consent is the central issue. Consent is, to borrow a phrase, the ‘moral magic’ that converts an impermissible act into a permissible one. In recent years, a handful of companies have tried to launch consent apps which aim to educate young people about the nature of sexual consent and allow them to record signals of consent for future verification. Although ostensibly aimed at addressing the problems of (...) rape and sexual assault on university campuses, these apps have attracted a number of critics. In this paper, I subject the phenomenon of consent apps to philosophical scrutiny. I argue that the consent apps that have been launched to date are unhelpful because they fail to address the landscape of ethical and epistemic problems that arise in the typical rape or sexual assault case: they produce distorted and decontextualised records of consent which may in turn exacerbate the other problems associated with rape and sexual assault. Furthermore, because of the tradeoffs involved, it is unlikely that app-based technologies could ever be created that would significantly address the problems of rape and sexual assault. (shrink)

Morality seems important, in the sense that there are practical reasons — at least for most of us, most of the time — to be moral. A central theoretical motivation for consequentialism is that it appears clear that there are practical reasons to promote good outcomes, but mysterious why we should care about non-consequentialist moral considerations or how they could be genuine reasons to act. In this paper we argue that this theoretical motivation is mistaken, and that because many arguments (...) for consequentialism rely upon it, the mistake substantially weakens the overall case for consequentialism. We argue that there is indeed a theoretical connection between good states and reasons to act, because good states are those it is fitting to desire and there is a conceptual connection between the fittingness of a motive and reasons to perform the acts it motivates. But while some of our motives are directed at states, others are directed at acts themselves. We contend that just as the fittingness of desires for states generates reasons to promote the good, the fittingness of these act-directed motives generates reasons to do other things. Moreover, we argue that an act’s moral status consists in the fittingness of act-directed feelings of obligation to perform or avoid performing it, so the connection between fitting motives and reasons to act explains reasons to be moral whether or not morality directs us to promote the good. This, we contend, de-mystifies how there could be non-consequentialist reasons that are both moral and practical. (shrink)

This is an English translation of Waldenfels' German essay: Equality and inequality are basic elements of law, justice and politics. Equality integrates each of us into a common sphere by distributing rights, duties and chances among us. Equality turns into mere indifference as far as we get overintegrated into social orders. When differences are fading away experience loses its relief and individuals lose their face. Our critical reflections start from the inevitable paradox of making equal what is not equal. In (...) various ways they refer to Nietzsche’s concept of order, to Marx’s analysis of money, to Lévinas’s ethics of the Other, and to novelists like Dostoevsky and Musil. Our critique turns against two extremes, on the one hand against any sort of normalism fixed on functioning orders, on the other hand against any sort of anomalism dreaming of mere events and permanent ruptures. Responsive phenomenology shows how we are confronted with extraordinary events. Those deviate from the ordinary and transgress its borders, without leaving the normality of our everyday world behind. The process of equalizing moves between the ordinary and the extraordinary. What makes the difference and resists mere indifference are creative responses which are to be invented again and again. (shrink)

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in the Open (...) Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

It is one thing for a given proposition to follow or to not follow from a given set of propositions and it is quite another thing for it to be shown either that the given proposition follows or that it does not follow.* Using a formal deduction to show that a conclusion follows and using a countermodel to show that a conclusion does not follow are both traditional practices recognized by Aristotle and used down through the history of logic. These (...) practices presuppose, respectively, a criterion of validity and a criterion of invalidity each of which has been extended and refined by modern logicians: deductions are studied in formal syntax (proof theory) and coun¬termodels are studied in formal semantics (model theory). The purpose of this paper is to compare these two criteria to the corresponding criteria employed in Boole’s first logical work, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847). In particular, this paper presents a detailed study of the relevant metalogical passages and an analysis of Boole’s symbolic derivations. It is well known, of course, that Boole’s logical analysis of compound terms (involving ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘except’, etc.) contributed to the enlargement of the class of propositions and arguments formally treatable in logic. The present study shows, in addition, that Boole made significant contributions to the study of deduc¬tive reasoning. He identified the role of logical axioms (as opposed to inference rules) in formal deductions, he conceived of the idea of an axiomatic deductive sys¬tem (which yields logical truths by itself and which yields consequences when ap¬plied to arbitrary premises). Nevertheless, surprisingly, Boole’s attempt to imple¬ment his idea of an axiomatic deductive system involved striking omissions: Boole does not use his own formal deductions to establish validity. Boole does give symbolic derivations, several of which are vitiated by “Boole’s Solutions Fallacy”: the fallacy of supposing that a solution to an equation is necessarily a logical consequence of the equation. This fallacy seems to have led Boole to confuse equational calculi (i.e., methods for gen-erating solutions) with deduction procedures (i.e., methods for generating consequences). The methodological confusion is closely related to the fact, shown in detail below, that Boole had adopted an unsound criterion of validity. It is also shown that Boole totally ignored the countermodel criterion of invalid¬ity. Careful examination of the text does not reveal with certainty a test for invalidity which was adopted by Boole. However, we have isolated a test that he seems to use in this way and we show that this test is ineffectual in the sense that it does not serve to identify invalid arguments. We go beyond the simple goal stated above. Besides comparing Boole’s earliest criteria of validity and invalidity with those traditionally (and still generally) employed, this paper also investigates the framework and details of THE MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF LOGIC. (shrink)

There are two different ways of understanding alienation: as a condition and as a struggle. On this distinction turns the whole theory and practice of Marxism.

As he moves closer to half of his term as president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Roa Duterte has continually been in friction with the Catholic Church, specifically with certain members of its hierarchy. Mainly identifiable as the dividing line between Duterte’s administration and the Church is the issue on human rights particularly the extrajudicial killings (EJK) of suspected users and pushers of illegal drugs. This paper argues that Duterte’s attitude and positioning towards the Catholic Church neither strengthen nor advance the (...) Philippine state towards a greater degree of secularization. On the contrary, the Church has become more politically and publicly involved. Consequently, it has remained a key actor or interest group providing an alternative moral discourse to that of the government. (shrink)

How does evidence figure into the reasoning of an agent? This is an intricate philosophical problem but also one we all encounter in our daily lives. In this chapter, we identify the problem and outline a possible solution to it. The problem arises, because the fact that it is up to us whether we do something makes a difference to how we should think of the evidence concerning whether we will actually do it. Otherwise we regard something that is up (...) to us as if it were not: We regard something that is up to us as if it were the outcome of a lottery. Nonetheless, we would be wrong to ignore the evidence. Otherwise we could not make a rational decision. In this chapter, we first show that a decision-theoretic approach to this problem cannot succeed. This approach does not explain how we can take evidence into account in practical reasoning without making predictions concerning matters that are up to us. It also gives rise to incoherence between our practical and our theoretical conclusions. We then argue that what is required to solve the problem is recognizing that beliefs about matters that are up to us can be grounded in practical reasoning. We argue that such beliefs are not subject to an evidential norm, because they are not meant to reflect a reality that is independent of them but instead are meant to bring about the reality they represent. Finally, we argue that, even if we are fully rational agents, we will sometimes lack practical knowledge of what we will do. That is because when it is practically rational to do something that will require resolve, we may be in a position to rationally conclude that we will do it, even though we have evidence that there is a non-negligible chance that we won’t. In such cases, our evidence serves as a defeater for our practical knowledge. (shrink)

In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas states that the “aspect of pastness” involved in memory is a certain kind of cognitive object — i.e., an intention — apprehended by the “estimative power.” All told, however, Aquinas mentions this idea precisely once. In this article, I construct an account of the idea that pastness is an estimative intention by drawing upon texts in which I argue that Aquinas develops this idea, albeit without invoking the terminology of the estimative intention. I conclude (...) that, by identifying the aspect of pastness as an estimative intention, Aquinas neatly synthesizes the Aristotelian and Arabic traditions on memory. (shrink)

Given demonstrated global knowledge inequality, this article attempts to draw out the connection between tertiary education and research (TER), economic development and infrastructure, and human development. We first explore the connection between knowledge and economic development by tracing a short history of the emergence of knowledge in economic analysis and by introducing the concept of a ‘knowledge economy’. The World Bank’s ‘Knowledge Assessment Methodology’ (2000) attempted to evaluate such ‘knowledge economies’ through a number of proposed variables. We describe relationships between (...) such TER-variables, economic development, and infrastructure building, especially in the shift towards digital economies. We will show that there is a tangible, negative human impact from disparities in knowledge production, and significant improvement in human welfare when knowledge production capacities improve. Finally, we will illustrate how these relationships play out in two case studies, in Montenegro and Bangladesh. (shrink)

This paper is a tentative step towards a historical cognitive science, in the domain of memory and personal identity. I treat theoretical models of memory in history as specimens of the way cultural norms and artifacts can permeate ('proto')scientific views of inner processes. I apply this analysis to the topic of psychological control over one's own body, brain, and mind. Some metaphors and models for memory and mental representation signal the projection inside of external aids. Overtly at least, medieval and (...) Renaissance theorists agreed that such models had to allow for, or even guarantee, some conception of cognitive order and discipline. Individual memory traces had to be independent, not mixed up or interfering with others. The long tradition of improving or bypassing 'natural memory' by deliberately internalizing artefactual models was part of an arduous process of self-fashioning. Moral panic about confusion and mixture features centrally in the imposition of cognitive discipline in local memory traditions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the problem of speaking past one another due to an asymmetry of the interlocutors' backgrounds. When individuals with different levels of relative privilege interact, the party with relative privilege may fail to engage with what is being communicated. I take up critical Gadamerian hermeneutics to ask how we, as individuals with relative privilege, can 'unstop' our ears so that the burden of explanation does not (unfairly) remain on those we hurt by our mishearing/non-hearing. I offer (...) two methods to achieve this 'unstopping': 'critical self-knowledge' through Quassim Cassam's 'Vice Epistemology' framework and 'critical world-knowledge' through the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Max Horkheimer and Jürgen Habermas, specifically). I then take up contemporary critical hermeneutics (Lorenzo Simpson) to show how, through the application of the critical methods, one might be able to achieve a useful, cross-cultural dialogue. This is imperative given our inexorably multi-cultural world today. (shrink)

Lloyd Jones’s *The Book of Fame*, a novel about the stunningly successful 1905 British tour of the New Zealand rugby team, represents both skilled group action and the difficulty of capturing it in words. The novel’s form is as fluid and deceptive, as adaptable and integrated, as the sweetly shaped play of the team that became known during this tour for the first time as the All Blacks. It treats sport on its own terms as a rich world, a set (...) of bodily skills, and an honest profession in itself. A reading of *The Book of Fame* can contribute to the interdisciplinary study of literature and cognition, exemplifying two-way ‘exchange values’. On the one hand, we gain insights into the nature of skilful group agency, of distinct forms and at distinct timescales, by focussing on the precise forms taken by the All Blacks’ creation of space. Here, we treat The Book of Fame as a brilliant evocation of features of collective thought, movement, and emotion that both everyday and scientific inquiry can easily miss. On the other hand, we also read back into the novel a subtle, fascinated interrogation of the mechanisms by which small groups form, evolve, and act. In this more ambitious mode of analysis, we use independently motivated theoretical concerns to help us see real features of the literary work that might otherwise remain invisible. We focus on the relationship between skilful performance and collective action. These topics fall outside the ambit of much current work by literary theorists using cognitive research, who tend to focus on theory of mind and modularity, metaphor and blending, emotion and empathy, consciousness and concepts, representation and so on. But skilled performance and collective action comprise surprisingly lively research fields across the sciences, from neuropsychology to philosophy of mind and cognitive anthropology. These areas of inquiry may provide even more productive avenues for future work in the interfield of literary and cultural theory and the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This paper raises obvious questions undermining any residual confidence in Mates work and revealing our embarrassing ignorance of true nature of Stoic deduction. It was inspired by the challenging exploratory work of JOSIAH GOULD.

Some natural philosophers in the 17th century believed that they could control their own innards, specifically the animal spirits coursing incessantly through brain and nerves, in order to discipline or harness passion, cognition and action under rational guidance. This chapter addresses the mechanisms thought necessary after Eden for controlling the physiology of passion. The tragedy of human embedding in the body, with its cognitive and moral limitations, was paired with a sense of our confinement in sequential time. I use two (...) strands of 17th-century natural philosophy to exemplify forms of the perceived connection between physiology, memory, and the passions. I deal at length with Cartesian mechanism, and more briefly with Restoration natural philosophy in England. These are fruitful historical domains for connecting cognition and culture, since relations of domination, disruption, or accommodation between present and past are in play for both selves and societies. Despite the difficulty of integrating affect with cognition in theories of brain and mind, the capacity to treat passion and memory together is crucial for future cognitive science to address issues which outsiders care about. (shrink)

Mistakes can be made in both personal and official accounts of past events: lies can be told. Stories about the past have many functions besides truth-telling: but we still care deeply that our sense of what happened should be accurate. The possibility of error in memory and in history implies a commonsense realism about the past. Truth in memory is a problem because, coupled with our desires to find out what really happened, we recognize that our individual and collective access (...) to past events may be indirect. This chapter sketches some approaches, from across the disciplines, to such problems about authority over the past. I open up recent lines of research on autobiographical memory which should be more accessible in the humanities and social sciences. Psychological work on constructive remembering should not be seen as sceptically challenging the very possibility of everyday authority over our own past, but as identifying specific forms of fallibility. I argue that the study of historical and social processes is an integral part of the cognitive sciences of memory, not a humanistic curiosity. (shrink)

In this essay, we consider the formal and ontological implications of one specific and intensely contested dialectical context from which Deleuze’s thinking about structural ideal genesis visibly arises. This is the formal/ontological dualism between the principles, ἀρχαί, of the One (ἕν) and the Indefinite/Unlimited Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς), which is arguably the culminating achievement of the later Plato’s development of a mathematical dialectic.3 Following commentators including Lautman, Oskar Becker, and Kenneth M. Sayre, we argue that the duality of the One and (...) the Indefinite Dyad provides, in the later Plato, a unitary theoretical formalism accounting, by means of an iterated mixing without synthesis, for the structural origin and genesis of both supersensible Ideas and the sensible particulars which participate in them. As these commentators also argue, this duality furthermore provides a maximally general answer to the problem of temporal becoming that runs through Plato’s corpus: that of the relationship of the flux of sensory experiences to the fixity and order of what is thinkable in itself. Additionally, it provides a basis for understanding some of the famously puzzling claims about forms, numbers, and the principled genesis of both attributed to Plato by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, and plausibly underlies the late Plato’s deep considerations of the structural paradoxes of temporal change and becoming in the Parmenides, the Sophist, and the Philebus. After extracting this structure of duality and developing some of its formal, ontological, and metalogical features, we consider some of its specific implications for a thinking of time and ideality that follows Deleuze in a formally unitary genetic understanding of structural difference. These implications of Plato’s duality include not only those of the constitution of specific theoretical domains and problematics, but also implicate the reflexive problematic of the ideal determinants of the form of a unitary theory as such. We argue that the consequences of the underlying duality on the level of content are ultimately such as to raise, on the level of form, the broader reflexive problem of the basis for its own formal or meta-theoretical employment. We conclude by arguing for the decisive and substantive presence of a proper “Platonism” of the Idea in Deleuze, and weighing the potential for a substantive recuperation of Plato’s duality in the context of a dialectical affirmation of what Deleuze recognizes as the “only” ontological proposition that has ever been uttered. This is the proposition of the univocity of Being, whereby “being is said in the same sense, everywhere and always,” but is said (both problematically and decisively) of difference itself. (shrink)

'Io trace a path from Pico della Mirandola's Renaissance man to the Jacobean malcontents of Marston or Webster is to document not an inflation of hopes for dominion over the natural world, but rather a loss of confidence in the possibility of control over even human affairs. 'For I am going into a wilderness, /Where I shall find nor path, nor friendly clew/To be my guide'.2 The bleak consequences of this lack of direction, leaving traces through into the Restoration period (...) in England, are particularly evident in the free will debate: of Milton's angels,. (shrink)

In Rational Powers in Action, Sergio Tenenbaum sets out a new theory of instrumental rationality that departs from standard discussions of means-ends coherence in the literature on structural rationality in at least two interesting ways: it takes intentional action (as opposed to intention) to be what puts in place the relevant instrumental requirements, and it applies to both necessary and non-necessary means. I consider these two developments in more detail. On the first, I argue that Tenenbaum’s theory is too narrow (...) since there could be instrumental irrationality with respect to an intention to X even if one is not yet engaged in any relevant intentional action. On the second, I argue against Tenenbaum’s claim that “an agent is instrumentally irrational if she knowingly fails to pursue some sufficient means to an end she is pursuing.”. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the section on Music and Politics including a description of the context of these essays, their individual contributions and their thematic interrelations.

The logical form of a discourse—such as a proposition, a set of propositions, an argument, or an argumentation—is obtained by abstracting from the subject-matter of its content terms or by regarding the content terms as mere place-holders or blanks in a form. In a logically perfect language the logical form of a proposition, a set of propositions, an argument, or an argumentation is determined by the grammatical form of the sentence, the set of sentences, the argument-text, or the argumentation-text expressing (...) it. Two such discourse-texts are said to have the same grammatical form, in this sense, if a uniform one-one substitution of content words transforms the one exactly into the other. The sentence ‘Abe properly respects every agent who respects himself’ may be regarded as having the same grammatical form as the sentence ‘Ben generously assists every patient who assists himself’. (shrink)

This paper discusses the idea of "pure experience" within the context of the Buddhist tradition and in connection with the notions of emptiness and dependent origination via a reading of Dale Wright's reading of 'Huangbo' in his 'Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism'. The purpose is to appropriate Wright's text in order to engender a response to Steven Katz's contextualist-constructivist thesis that there are no "pure" (i.e., unmediated) experiences. In light of the Mahayana claim that everything is empty of substance, i.e., (...) originates dependently through conditions, contingencies, and contexts, what does the "purity" of the Enlightenment experience mean for Chan/Zen Buddhism? (shrink)

A person with one dollar is poor. If a person with n dollars is poor, then so is a person with n + 1 dollars. Therefore, a person with a billion dollars is poor. True premises, valid reasoning, a false a conclusion. This is an instance of the Sorites-paradox. (There are infinitely many such paradoxes. A man with an IQ of 1 is unintelligent. If a man with an IQ of n is unintelligent, so is a man with an IQ (...) of n+1. Therefore a man with an IQ of 200 is unintelligent.) Most attempts to solve this paradox reject some law of classical logic, usually the law of bivalence. I show that this paradox can be solved while holding on to all the laws of classical logic. Given any predicate that generates a Sorites-paradox, significant use of that predicate is actually elliptical for a relational statement: a significant token of "Bob is poor" means that Bob is poor compared to x, for some value of x. Once a value of x is supplied, a definite cutoff line between having and not having the paradox-generating predicate is supplied. This neutralizes the inductive step in the associated Sorites argument, and the would-be paradox is avoided. (shrink)

Previous work has shown that the Complex Conceptual Spaces − Single Observation Mathematical framework is a useful tool for event characterization. This mathematical framework is developed on the basis of Conceptual Spaces and uses integer linear programming to find the needed similarity values. The work of this paper is focused primarily on space event characterization. In particular, the focus is on the ranking of threats for malicious space events such as a kinetic kill. To make the Conceptual Spaces framework work, (...) the similarity values between the contents of observations on the one hand and the properties of the entities observed on the other needs to be found. This paper shows how to exploit Dempster-Shafer theory to implement a statistical approach for finding these similarities values. This approach will allow a user to identify the uncertainty involved in similarity value data, which can later be propagated through the developed mathematical model in order for the user to know the overall uncertainty in the observation-to-concept mappings needed for space event characterization. (shrink)

In this paper we prove the completeness of three logical systems I LI, IL2 and IL3. IL1 deals solely with identities {a = b), and its deductions are the direct deductions constructed with the three traditional rules: (T) from a = b and b = c infer a = c, (S) from a = b infer b = a and (A) infer a = a(from anything). IL2 deals solely with identities and inidentities {a ± b) and its deductions include both (...) the direct and the indirect deductions constructed with the three traditional rules. IL3 is a hybrid of IL1 and IL2: its deductions are all direct as in IL1 but it deals with identities and inidentities as in IL2. IL1 and IL2 have a high degree of naturalness. Although the hybrid system IL3 was constructed as an artifact useful in the mathematical study of IL1 and IL2, it nevertheless has some intrinsically interesting aspects. The main motivation for describing and studying such simple systems is pedagogical. In teaching beginning logic one would like to present a system of logic which has the following properties. First, it exemplifies the main ideas of logic: implication, deduction, non-implication, counterargument(or countermodel), logical truth, self-contradiction, consistency,satisfiability, etc. Second, it exemplifies the usual general metaprinciples of logic: contraposition and transitivity of implication, cut laws, completeness,soundness, etc. Third, it is simple enough to be thoroughly grasped by beginners. Fourth, it is obvious enough so that its rules do not appear to be arbitrary or purely conventional. Fifth, it does not invite confusions which must be unlearned later. Sixth, it involves a minimum of presuppositions which are no longer accepted in mainstream contemporary logic. (shrink)

Projects in memory studies are best driven by topic not tradition, because the phenomena under investigation are usually interactive, not neatly compartmentalized. This imposes open-endedness not only in tracing diverse activities of remembering across the spread of relevant disciplines, but also in looking beyond memory altogether in order better to understand its diverse manifestations.

According to the Guise of the Good, an agent only does for a reason what she sees as good. One of the main motivations for the view is its apparent ability to explain why action for a reason must be intelligible to its agent, for on this view, an action is intelligible just in case it seems good. This motivation has come under criticism in recent years. Most notably, Kieran Setiya has argued that merely seeing one’s action as good does (...) not suffice to make the action intelligible. In this paper, I show that this objection has bite only because the Guise of the Good’s theory of intelligibility has yet seen little sustained articulation. Properly understood, this theory holds that an action is intelligible to an agent only if it appears to them to possess some substantive evaluative property. I then argue that this response to the objection has a significant implication for contemporary Guise of the Good theories, for it shows that the currently ascendant version of the theory, the attitudinal theory, cannot avail itself of the intelligibility motivation. (shrink)

A case study exploring the importance of compassion for enemies appealing to a series of targeting decisions, co-written with the senior Marine in Iraq in 2003-4.

This essay suggests an alternative accountability process on the basis of critiques of current evaluation practice in higher education. Using cases in the British university system, with some international commentary and thinking through experience in Asian universities in four countries in the wake of ‘audit culture’, the work of Thorstein Bunde Veblen is revived. With Veblen, the current structures and mechanics of the corporate and fully-monetised university might once more be challenged. The risk of importing the metrics and audit culture (...) of Britain, and the neoliberal managerialist administration-led university of North America, wholesale into Asian universities is questioned by acknowledgment that exiting hierarchies are persistent, and competing on Euro-American terms is a recipe for disaster. Due recognition is curtailed, hard work and standards are ignored, prospects for junior staff are constrained to a kind of intellectual and social penury. Resources based on research skills more robust than the current axiomatic research assessment calculus are suggested from within the university. The solution is not to emulate a declining system, but to innovate and invent new horizons and terms of engagement. The proposals offered here are only a suggestion for reflexive inquiry and informed self-examination—criticism-self-criticism from co-research sociology, ethnographic film and urban geography, among others—offered as alternate concurrent paths to accountability. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo exponer algunas de las principales cuestiones que se debaten bajo el término de multiculturalismo en el marco de un contexto político de gran amplitud. Se centra tanto en el tema de las minorías nacionales y sus demandas de autonomía política como en las minorías étnicas inmigrantes y su establecimiento en el seno de los Estados de acogida. Ambos tipos de minorías son percibidos como fuente de problemas en la Europa Occidental, el sudeste de Europa y (...) la antigua Unión Soviética y los debates que emergen en cada una de estas zonas geográficas impactan sobre su gestión y gobierno en el resto de las áreas mencionadas. Por último, se reconoce que la naturaleza del debate ha sufrido un gran cambio como consecuencia del actual liderazgo estadounidense en la lucha contra el terrorismo. (shrink)

Editor's Intro to the journal issue. Wittgenstein's methods are more important than his solutions or views on particular problems. He also attacks processes which give rise to philosophical problems, such as Cartesian dualism and Platonism and other more narrow pictures or assumptions. His recommendations that progress be based on what we get from juxtaposing examples with philosophical temptations are still being absorbed by the discipline. This is more the case now, fifteen years aftr I wrote this introduction.

What’s wrong with begging the question? Some philosophers believe that question-begging arguments are inevitably fallacious and that their fallaciousness stems from a shared “formal” deficiency. In contrast, some philosophers, like Robinson deny that begging the question is fallacious at all. And others characterize begging the question as an “informal” fallacy of reasoning that can only be understood with the aid of epistemic notions. Sorensen joins this last camp by offering a powerful argument against both Robinson’s skepticism and fully formal approaches (...) to the phenomenon. According to Sorensen’s view, question-begging is fallacious because it compromises the rationality of the question-beggar’s position. Though his argument forces Robinson into a peculiar dialectical position, it does little to elucidate the reasons why Robinson’s position is unstable and it fails to embody Sorensen’s own conception of rationally persuasive argumentation. I utilize this conception to show how Robinson is left with no easily identifiable grounds on which to deny the fallaciousness of begging the question. By advancing the dialectic between Sorensen and Robinson, I aim to show that our argumentative practices must take the perspectives of others seriously, whether or not those perspectives are rational. (shrink)

One is sometimes, but only sometimes, justified in pursuing a suboptimal course of action due to a concern that, in attempting the ideal course, one might fail to follow through and so make the situation even worse. This paper explains why such hedging is sometimes justified and sometimes not. -/- The explanation we offer relies on Elizabeth Anscombe’s distinction between reasons and logoi. Reasons are normative considerations that identify something good or bad that an act will secure or avoid, while (...) logoi constrain which actions one may consider at all. We argue that a careful unpacking of this distinction, in light of Anscombe’s associated notion of natural unintelligibility, explains why hedging is only sometimes justified. First, the intuitively inappropriate cases of hedging all involve treating logoi as though they had the normative bearing of reasons. Second, the action-theoretic differences between reasons and logoi ground a principled explanation of why one may hedge when considering reasons but not when considering logoi. -/- Having made this argument, we then show how our approach to hedging is superior to the two approaches recently developed by Berislav Marušić and Stephen White. First, we show that their accounts give counter-intuitive results in some cases. Second, we argue that their accounts violate a plausible principle of interpersonal parity (i.e., they sometimes allow us to consider the faults of others while precluding us from considering our own faults). Finally, we argue that our account better explains how intuitions shift as we vary the details of cases. (shrink)