Psychopathic individuals display a callous-coldhearted approach to interpersonal and affective situations and engage in impulsive and antisocial behaviors. Despite early conceptualizations suggesting that psychopathy is related to enhanced cognitive functioning, research examining executive functioning (EF) in psychopathy has yielded few such findings. It is possible that some psychopathic trait dimensions are more related to EF than others. Research using a 2-factor or 4-facet model of psychopathy highlights some dimension-specific differences in EF, but this research is limited in scope. Another complicating (...) factor in teasing apart the EF–psychopathy relationship is the tendency to use different psychopathy assessments for incarcerated versus community samples. In this study, an EF battery and multiple measures of psychopathic dimensions were administered to a sample of male prisoners (N. (shrink)

Which artificial intelligence (AI) systems are agents? To answer this question, I propose a multidimensional account of agency. According to this account, a system's agency profile is jointly determined by its level of goal-directedness and autonomy as well as is abilities for directly impacting the surrounding world, long-term planning and acting for reasons. Rooted in extant theories of agency, this account enables fine-grained, nuanced comparative characterizations of artificial agency. I show that this account has multiple important virtues and is more (...) informative than alternatives. More speculatively, it may help to illuminate two important emerging questions in AI ethics: 1. Can agency contribute to the moral status of non-human beings, and how? 2. When and why might AI systems exhibit power-seeking behaviour and does this pose an existential risk to humanity? (shrink)

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; S. O. Lilienfeld, 1990; S. O. Lilienfeld & B. P. Andrews, 1996) with a community sample has suggested that the PPI subscales may comprise 2 higher order factors (S. D. Benning, C. J. Patrick, B. M. Hicks, D. M. Blonigen, & R. F. Krueger, 2003). However, substantive and structural evidence raises concerns about the viability of this 2-factor model, particularly in offender populations. The authors attempted to replicate the S. D. (...) Benning et al. 2-factor solution using a large (N= 1,224) incarcerated male sample. Confirmatory factor analysis of this model resulted in poor model fit. Similarly, using the same EFA procedures as did S. D. Benning et al., the authors found little evidence for a 2-factor model. When they followed the recommendations of J.-W. van Prooijen and W. A. van der Kloot (2001) for recovering EFA solutions, model fit results provided some evidence that a 3-factor EFA solution could be recovered via confirmatory factor analysis. (shrink)

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

Which animals have conscious experiences? Many different, diverse and unrelated behaviors and cognitive capacities have been proposed as tests of the presence of consciousness in an animal. It is unclear which of these tests, if any, are valid. To remedy this problem, I develop a list consisting of eight desiderata which can be used to assess putative tests of animal consciousness. These desiderata are based either on detailed analogies between consciousness-linked human behavior and non-human behavior, on theories of consciousness or (...) on methods from human consciousness science. If a test or set of tests satisfies more of these desiderata, passing it provides stronger evidence of consciousness. Moreover, one can design future tests of animal consciousness with the intention of satisfying these desiderata to ensure their evidential strength. (shrink)

One recently proposed solution to the Liar paradox is the contextual theory of truth. Tyler Burge (1979) argues that truth is an indexical notion and that the extension of the truth predicate shifts during Liar reasoning. A Liar sentence might be true in one context and false in another. To many, contextualism seems to capture our pre-theoretic intuitions about the semantic paradoxes; this is especially due to its reliance on the so-called Revenge phenomenon. I, however, show that Super-Liar sentences (where (...) a Super-Liar sentence is a sentence which says of itself that it is not true in any context) generate a significant problem for Burge’s contextual theory of truth. (shrink)

A long tradition of psychological research has explored the distinction between characteristics that are part of the self and those that lie outside of it. Recently, a surge of research has begun examining a further distinction. Even among characteristics that are internal to the self, people pick out a subset as belonging to the true self. These factors are judged as making people who they really are, deep down. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the true self and (...) identify features that distinguish people’s understanding of the true self from their understanding of the self more generally. In particular, we consider recent findings that the true self is perceived as positive and moral, and that this tendency is actor-observer invariant and cross-culturally stable. We then explore possible explanations for these findings and discuss their implications for a variety of issues in psychology. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

Roughly, empirical AI alignment research (AIA) is an area of AI research which investigates empirically how to design AI systems in line with human goals. This paper examines the role of non-epistemic values in AIA. It argues that: (1) Sciences differ in the degree to which values influence them. (2) AIA is strongly value-laden. (3) This influence of values is managed inappropriately and thus threatens AIA’s epistemic integrity and ethical beneficence. (4) AIA should strive to achieve value transparency, critical scrutiny (...) from inside and outside the discipline – involving the public –, and to empower actors without strong commercial interests. (shrink)

Patient centred diagnosis is best practised through shared decision making; an iterative dialogue between doctor and patient, whichrespects a patient’s needs, values, preferences, and circumstances. -/- Shared decision making for diagnostic situations differs fundamentally from that for treatment decisions. This has important implications when considering its practical application. -/- The nature of dialogue should be tailored to the specific diagnostic decision; scenarios with higher stakes or uncertainty usually require more detailed conversations.

L'Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs ratifiée par le Canada et les États-Unis en 2002 a transformé la conception de la souveraineté territoriale canadienne, tel qu'en témoigne le traitement accordé aux demandeur-euse-s d'asile ces dernières années. Arguant à l'effet que l'État canadien adopte une conception de la souveraineté territoriale étanche qui permet l'exercice d'un droit de sélection depuis la mise en place de l'ETPS, cet article propose de repenser un devoir politique d'accueil. La première partie de cet article examine la (...) dynamique d'externalisation de la migration à laquelle participe le Canada. La seconde partie propose une analyse du cadre normatif développé par l'ETPS justifié par un droit de « choisir » les réfugié-e-s. La troisième partie propose une critique du modèle d'exclusion à l'oeuvre derrière l'ETPS et propose à cette fin de penser la responsabilité canadienne en tant que devoir politique à l'égard des populations qui demandent l'asile. (shrink)

Through engagement with key informants and review of ethical theories applicable to refugee policy, this paper examines the ethical and policy considerations that policy-level stakeholders believe should factor into setting the refugee resettlement ceiling. We find that the ceiling traditionally has been influenced by policy goals, underlying values, and practical considerations. These factors map onto several ethical approaches to resettlement. There is significant alignment between U.S. policy interests and ethical obligations toward refugees. We argue that the refugee ceiling should be (...) restored to historical norms, and that there exists a corresponding obligation to counter negative public perceptions about refugees and the costs of resettlement. (shrink)

Jus post Bellum is, like Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello, a part of just war theory. Jus post Bellum is distinguished from the other parts of just war theory by being primarily concerned with the principles necessary for securing a just and lasting peace after the end of a war. Traditionally, jus post bellum has focused primarily on three goals: [1] compensating those who have been the victims of unjust aggression, while respecting the rights of the aggressors, [2] (...) punishing and rehabilitating those guilty of war crimes and other violations of the principles of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello and [3] developing measures that will prevent future war and violence (Orend 2000 and May 2012). In this chapter, I outline an account of political forgiveness and explain the role that political forgiveness can have in promoting the goals of jus post bellum. My conception of political forgiveness requires some unpacking. Let me begin with individual forgiveness, which I understand along familiar Butlerian lines as the renunciation of resentment (Butler, Sermon IX in McNaughton 2017: 75-83), though with a bit of a twist. More exactly, ● An individual, I, forgives J for doing F if and only if I renounces all her own warrant for resenting J for doing F. Resentment is a judgment-sensitive attitude, and, therefore, it tends to track judgments concerning its warrant (Scanlon 1998: 20 and Smith 2015). In cases of perfect forgiveness, I’s renunciation causes her to cease feeling resentment toward J for doing F, though, of course, less perfect cases are possible. I reject the idea that there is a sharp discontinuity between individual and political forgiveness, a position argued for by, e.g., Peter Digeser (1998 and 2001). By contrast, I understand political forgiveness as the renunciation of resentment by the relevant political body in question. With greater precision, ● A sovereign political body, P, forgives J for doing F if and only if P renounces all warrant that its citizens have for resenting, as part of their public lives, J for doing F. A little more explanation is in order. Sovereign political bodies, such as national governments, claim degrees of control over the lives of their citizens, in both their public and their private aspects, though the claims with respect to the former tend to be considerably more expansive than the claims with respect to the latter. I assume here that, at least in the case of legitimate governments, these claims of control are often valid. Such governments may reasonably renounce certain grounds for motivating action in the public sphere. For example, governments may renounce all warrant that its citizens have, as part of their public lives, for hating members of marginalized groups. In practice, this means that, while citizens might continue to act in their private lives out of hatred for members of these groups, their appeal to this hatred is seen by the state as irrelevant to matters of law and public policy as well as being wholly out-of-place in public discourse. Political forgiveness toward J for doing F, as I understand it, involves an analogous rejection of resentment, on the part of citizens in their public lives, toward J for doing F. I turn now to the matter of how political forgiveness supports securing a just and lasting peace between former belligerents. With respect to the first goal of jus post bellum, political forgiveness helps to balance compensation for victims and respect for the rights of defeated aggressors by countering the all-too-human tendency to overvalue harms done to oneself and to members of one’s group. As regards the second goal, political forgiveness plays a similar role but also provides a model for rehabilitation by exemplifying among the victorious the behavior to be emulated by the vanquished. Finally, political forgiveness promotes the third goal of jus post bellum by providing a space for nations to meet as moral equals rather than allowing one nation to have the moral high ground over the other. None of this, of course, means that political forgiveness should be unearned or that it should be confused with condonation (Kolnai 1973 and Pettigrove 2004). However, the question of what is required to put oneself in a position to be forgiven as part of jus post bellum is a matter that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. (shrink)

The Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles , according to which two objects are identical if they share all the same properties, has come in for much criticism. Michael Della Rocca has recently defended PII on the grounds that it is needed to forestall the possibility that where there appears to be only one object present, there is actually a multiplicity of exactly-overlapping such objects. Katherine Hawley has criticized this approach for violating a plausible “ground rule” in applying rules of (...) indiscernibility to questions of identity: where there is putative duplication, it must be qualitatively significant. Hawley further suggests that with this rule in hand, one can tell the difference between the presence of one and two indiscernible objects without recourse to either PII or brute, nonqualitative individuation. In this paper, I critically examine Hawley’s contention and find that her appeal to “qualitatively significant duplication” fails since its application to distinct indiscernibles involves a difference that is primarily quantitative anyway. The upshot is a different proposed set of “ground rules” for applying the criterion of qualitative difference when seeking a grounding or explanation for distinctness and identity. (shrink)

The paper, Some Indigenous Solutions to African Environmental Problems: An Appraisal, is written to examine the relevance of African Environmental Philosophies to addressing African environmental problems. African environmental problems include: water pollution, air pollution, land pollution, climate change, flood and many more. Researchers have shown that these problems are caused by phenomena like coal mining, nuclear waste, deforestation, overfishing, wars, etc. It is a known fact that attempts have been made over the years to resolve these problems, with pockets of (...) successes, yet more needs to be done. Nigeria’s Niger Delta Development Commission, Kenya’s Bio-safty Act 2009, The National Environment Policy of Ghana, Oil Pipeline Act 2004, Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Act 2004 are a good example of such attempts with pockets of successes and challenges. This work uses the methods of rational speculation and critical analysis to examine aboriginal approaches to resolving African environmental challenges as recorded in Mark Omorovie Ikeke’s Philosophical Consciences, Caroline N. Mbonu’s Ecospiritualism, Thaddeus Metz’s Model Relationalism, and Chimakonam Jonathan Okeke’s Ohanifism. This work charged African environmental policymakers, Lecturers, and Students with the responsibility to understand and apply the theoretical foundation for sustainable living as recorded in the above philosophies. This is the time when Africans must use indigenous African methods and principles to proffer solutions to African environmental problems. (shrink)

: New genetic technologies continue to emerge that allow us to control the genetic endowment of future children. Increasingly the claim is made that it is morally "irresponsible" for parents to fail to use such technologies when they know their possible children are at risk for a serious genetic disorder. We believe such charges are often unwarranted. Our goal in this article is to offer a careful conceptual analysis of the language of irresponsibility in an effort to encourage more care (...) in its use. Two of our more important sub-claims are: A fair judgment of genetic irresponsibility necessarily requires a thick background description of the specific reproductive choice; and there is no necessary connection between an act's being morally wrong and its being irresponsible. These are distinct judgments requiring distinct justifications. (shrink)

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by callous antisocial behavior and criminal recidivism. Here we examine whether psychopathy is associated with alterations in functional connectivity in three large-scale cortical networks. Using fMRI in 142 adult male prison inmates, we computed resting-state functional connectivity using seeds from the default mode network, frontoparietal network, and cingulo-opercular network. To determine the specificity of our findings to these cortical networks, we also calculated functional connectivity using seeds from two comparison primary sensory networks: visual and (...) auditory networks. Regression analyses related network connectivity to overall psychopathy scores and to subscores for the “factors” and “facets” of psychopathy: Factor 1, interpersonal/affective traits; Factor 2, lifestyle/antisocial traits; Facet 1, interpersonal; Facet 2, affective; Facet 3, lifestyle; Facet 4, antisocial. Overall psychopathy severity was associated with reduced functional connectivity between lateral parietal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The two factor scores exhibited contrasting relationships with functional connectivity: Factor 1 scores were associated with reduced functional connectivity in the three cortical networks, whereas Factor 2 scores were associated with heightened connectivity in the same networks. This dissociation was evident particularly in the functional connectivity between anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The facet scores also demonstrated distinct patterns of connectivity. We found no associations between psychopathy scores and functional connectivity within visual or auditory networks. These findings provide novel evidence on the neural correlates of psychopathy and suggest that connectivity between cortical association hubs, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, may be a neurobiological marker of the disorder. (shrink)

A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do (...) appear to play an important role in people's beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity remains the same when its features improve than when its features deteriorate. Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect. (shrink)

Structural realists claim that we should endorse only what our scientific theories say about the structure of the unobservable world. But according to Newman’s Objection, the structural realist’s claims about unobservables are trivially true. In recent years, several theorists have offered responses to Newman’s Objection. But a common complaint is that these responses “give up the spirit” of the structural realist position. In this paper, I will argue that the simplest way to respond to Newman’s Objection is (...) to return to one of the standard motivations for adopting structural realism in the first place: the No Miracles Argument. Far from betraying the spirit of structural realism, the solution I present is available to any theorist who endorses this argument. (shrink)

Recent authors, emphasizing Newman’s distaste for natural theology—especially William Paley’s design argument—have urged us to follow Newman’s lead and reject design arguments. But I argue that Newman’s own argument for God’s existence (his argument from conscience) fails without a supplementary design argument or similar reason to think our faculties are truth-oriented. In other words, Newman appears to need the kind of argument he explicitly rejects. Finding Newman’s rejection of natural theology to stem primarily from factors (...) other than worries about cogency, however, I further argue that there is little reason not to pursue design arguments in order to save the argument from conscience. (shrink)

Karl Popper has often been cast as one of the most solitary figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The received image is of a thinker who developed his scientific philosophy virtually alone and in opposition to a crowd of brilliant members of the Vienna Circle. This paper challenges the received view and undertakes to correctly situate on the map of the history of philosophy Popper’s contribution, in particular, his renowned fallibilist theory of knowledge. The motive for doing so is the conviction that (...) the mainstream perspective on Popper’s philosophy makes him more difficult to understand than might otherwise be the case. The thinker who figures most significantly in the account of Popper developed in these pages is Leonard Nelson. Both a neo-Friesian and neo-Kantian, this philosopher deeply influenced Popper through his student Julius Kraft, who met with Popper on numerous occasions in the mid 1920s. It is in the light of this influence that we understand Popper’s recollection that when he criticized the Vienna Circle in the early 1930s, he looked upon himself “as an unorthodox Kantian”. (shrink)

In recent years, critical discourse concerning the millenarian eschatology of the early Patristic era of Christianity has called into question the common notion that millenarian concepts have been utterly rejected as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. No Ecumenical Council has ever rejected millenarian eschatology, and papal and juridical statements on the issue have been taken out of context. This essay brings forward, as testing agents, John Henry Newman’s first two notes in Development in order to determine whether Patristic (...) millenarianism, along with a more recently explored version called Eucharistic millenarianism, is a valid example of doctrinal development of an earlier type. Eucharistic millenarianism borrows many aspects from a primitive apostolic source and has been embraced by the Catholic hierarchy, raising the question of how millenarian aspects might legitimately inform contemporary theology. Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine, particularly as seen in his first two notes, is a valuable tool for reevaluating latent concepts that have been unfairly viewed as marginal or even heretical in mainline theological discourse. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Newman’s approach to what we might call “the problem of the partiality and unity of the sciences.” The problem can be expressed in the form of a question: “If all human knowing is finite and partial, then on what grounds can one know of the unity and wholeness of all the sciences?” Newman’s solution to the problem is openly theistic, since it appeals to one’s knowledge of God. For Newman, even if I exclusively (...) pursue my own partial science as a physicist, or psychologist, or historian, and even if I do not understand much about the content of the other sciences, nevertheless it is still possible for me to grasp the comprehensive ground of the unity of all the sciences, by virtue of my knowledge of God. The problem, however, is that this solution seems to rely on the sort of intellectual imperialism that Newman criticizes throughout much of his work. For this solution seems to assert the unity of the sciences only by placing one science—theology—above all the others as a supervening Über-science. The aim of this paper is to defend Newman against this charge of imperialism, and to show that his thought is not only more plausible, but also more nuanced, than might appear at first sight. (shrink)

Newman’s zips act as a kind of intervention or temporal event that differentiates the canvas, preventing Being from falling into the anonymous and impersonal il y a. The zip is what might be described as ecstatic temporality (ecstatic from the Ancient Greek ek “out” + histanai “to place, cause to stand out”). Time not only gives sense or meaning to Being, it marks the emergence of sensation, the physical materiality of something or someone.

In recent years, Duncan Pritchard has developed a position in religious epistemology called quasi‐fideism that he claims traces back to John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, we give three reasons to think that Pritchard's reading of Newman as a quasi‐fideist is mistaken. First, Newman's parity argument does not claim that religious and non‐religious beliefs are on a par because both are groundless; instead, for Newman, they are on a par (...) because both often stem from implicit rather than explicit reasoning. Second, pace Pritchard, Newman's distinction between simple and complex assent does not map onto the Wittgensteinian distinction between groundless hinge commitments and beliefs that flow from these hinges. For Newman, simple and complex assent differ in terms of the believer's level of awareness of their grounds. Third, and finally, Newman does not reject Locke's evidentialism in toto. Instead, he argues that certitude is not restricted to beliefs stemming from intuition and demonstration but often rightly includes probabilistically supported (or fallibly evidenced) beliefs. (shrink)

The main thesis of this article is that Newman’s famous Idea of a University cannot be fully appreciated without the background of the educational programmes popularized in the first half of the 19th century, which have their matrix in the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. The comparison of these two thinkers shows that Newman built his system of education and arrived at its basic principles precisely by refuting the principles of utilitarianism and liberalism of his time. From this (...) perspective, his work on education no longer remains a quiet prose, but can be seen as a moral and cultural struggle over fundamental values. (shrink)

The scant scholarship associated with Newman’s Anglican views about Judaism has focused on his negative rhetoric against Judaism and portrayed him as anti-Semitic. His Anglican writings, however, applied terms associated with Judaism in a typological sense to the political and religious realities of his day, primarily to support his apologetic agenda and to highlight threats to the Church of England. Simultaneously, he stressed the positive characteristics of Judaism, illustrated the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, and pointed out that the (...) religious system of Judaism was divinely inspired and contained worthy examples for Christian living. (shrink)

Christopher Nolan’s Memento illustrates and explores two roles that memory plays in human life. The film’s protagonist, Leonard Shelby, cannot ‘make new memories’. He copes by using a ‘system’ of polaroids, tatoos, charts and notes that substitutes for memory in its first role, the retention of information. In particular, the system is supposed to help Leonard carry out his sole goal: to find and kill his wife’s murderer. In this it proves a disastrous failure. But are we so (...) very much better off? The film uses the failures of Leonard’s system to raise doubts about the effectiveness of our own psychological capacities for grasping the past. However, memory does more than allow us to retain information. As Richard Wollheim showed, it also enables the past to control our present, by perpetuating, while modifying, its affective hold over us. This is something wholly denied Leonard. By implicitly contrasting his position with ours in this respect, the film also explores this second role that memory plays in our lives. (shrink)

This study considers Newman’s sermon—“On the Nature of the Future Promise”—which he preached on 4 September 1825 at St. Clement’s Church, Oxford—likely with his mother and sisters present in the congregation; in addition to treating Newman’s style of preaching and Evangelical theology, this sermon’s theological and pastoral dimensions are also examined.

This article considers the role of emotion in John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent by distinguishing five different ways (or ‘models’) in which the emotions play a positive epistemic role in relation to cognition. The most important of these, the Cognitive-Emotion Model, offers a new account of Newman's crucial idea of real assent, one that stresses the primary role of the emotions in real assent rather than imagination. This model helps to explain the nature of real assent by (...) highlighting Newman's portrayal of an emotional way of knowing an object that is personal or individual, incommunicable, vivid, and motive. In this study of the relations between emotion and cognition I hope to highlight unexplored aspects of the nature of real assent and the importance of the role of emotion in it and hope to show how Newman's epistemology offers a rich framework for exploring the positive epistemic contributions of the emotions. -/- . (shrink)

As any fan of Leonard Cohen will tell you, many of his songs are deeply “philosophical,” in the sense that they deal reflectively and intelligently with the many of the basic issues of everyday human life, such as death, sex, love, God, and the meaning of life. It may surprise these same listeners to discover that much of academic philosophy (both past and present) has relatively little in common with this sort of introspective reflection, but is instead highly abstract, (...) methodologically complex, and filled with technical terminology that can make it inaccessible to anyone except specialists. This is not true of all philosophy, however, and Cohen’s focus on the immediate problems facing ordinary humans has much in common with the theories and ideas proposed by the Hellenistic philosophers who dominated the intellectual life of Greek- and Roman-influenced Europe for almost a thousand years. In this essay, I’ll use Cohen’s songs to examine the three major branches of Hellenistic thought: Stoicism (That’s No Way to Say Goodbye, If It Be Your Will), Epicureanism (Everybody Knows, Closing Time), and Skepticism (Famous Blue Raincoat, Different Sides). (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the Newman problem in the context of contemporary epistemic structural realism (ESR). I formulate Newman’s objection in terms that apply to today’s ESR and then evaluate a defence of ESR based on Carnap’s use of Ramsey sentences and Hilbert’s ε-operator. I show that this defence improves the situation by allowing a formal stipulation of non-structural constraints. However, it fails short of achieving object individuation in the context of satisfying the Ramsified form of a (...) theory. Thus, while limiting the scope of Newman’s argument, Carnap sentences do not fully solve the problem. (shrink)

In his 1927 Analysis of Matter and elsewhere, Russell argued that we can successfully infer the structure of the external world from that of our explanatory schemes. While nothing guarantees that the intrinsic qualities of experiences are shared by their objects, he held that the relations tying together those relata perforce mirror relations that actually obtain (these being expressible in the formal idiom of the Principia Mathematica). This claim was subsequently criticized by the Cambridge mathematician Max Newman as true (...) but trivial, insofar as from a closed body of observations (or “Ramsey sentence”) one can always generate other equally-satisfactory networks of relations, provided they respect the original set’s cardinality. Since any model thus generated will be empirically adequate, “[t]he defence is therefore driven back from the fairly safe fictitious-real classification to the much less tenable ‘trivial’ and ‘important’” (Newman 1928). Given the definitional rigour afforded by the initial appeal to isomorphism (via one-to-one correspondences in extension), the received assessment, shared by Russell himself, is that retreating to a pragmatic adjudication would betoken a fatal blow. However, I suggest that reliance on “importance” can be avoided if we incorporate an impersonal criterion of diachronic precedence. When collecting observations, an ordinality emerges alongside the cardinality which gives that underived structure an irrevocable epistemological privilege. Hence, I argue that, all other things being equal, any construct parasitic on an antecedent theory ought to be regarded as inferior/dispensable, since it was generated by an algorithm lacking the world-involving pedigree of its host structure. (shrink)

John Henry Newman's theory of heresiology evolved over the course of his life, accentuating certain Christological characteristics of heresy. He began with the study of the Arian heresy, progressing through the Sabellian and Apolloniarian, and ending with the Monophysite. The theory of heresy and orthodoxy finally developed in the Development of Doctrine reflects this struggle to find common features of orthodoxy corresponding to principles governing Christology in the early Church Fathers. As a consequence, Newman's heresiology, in its final (...) stage, holds that faith is inherently Christological, as it depends on the doctrine of the Incarnation to secure the authority of the divine voice of Christ to which one submits in faith. (shrink)

J. H. Newman is known as a convert, an educator and a theologian, however, the twenty thousand letters he wrote testify to another aspect of his personality: A good friend. Friendship was not an abstract ideal for him, it was love given and received. Throughout his life he cultivated committed and generous relationships, sharing his heart, time, wisdom and financial resources with his friends. In today’s world where intimacy, friendship, commitment and generosity are often seen with suspicion, the way (...) Newman lived friendship, while cultivating a deep intellectual life in the celibate state of a clergyman, can be very enlightening. (shrink)

Corcoran’s 27 entries in the 1999 second edition of Robert Audi’s Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP]. -/- ancestral, axiomatic method, borderline case, categoricity, Church (Alonzo), conditional, convention T, converse (outer and inner), corresponding conditional, degenerate case, domain, De Morgan, ellipsis, laws of thought, limiting case, logical form, logical subject, material adequacy, mathematical analysis, omega, proof by recursion, recursive function theory, scheme, scope, Tarski (Alfred), tautology, universe of discourse. -/- The entire work is available online free at more than (...) one website. Paste the whole URL. http://archive.org/stream/RobertiAudi_The.Cambridge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy/Robert.Audi_The.Cambrid ge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy -/- The 2015 third edition will be available soon. Before you think of buying it read some reviews on Amazon and read reviews of its competition: For example, my review of the 2008 Oxford Companion to Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic,29:3,291-292. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340701300429 -/- Some of the entries have already been found to be flawed. For example, Tarski’s expression ‘materially adequate’ was misinterpreted in at least one article and it was misused in another where ‘materially correct’ should have been used. The discussion provides an opportunity to bring more flaws to light. -/- Acknowledgements: Each of these entries was presented at meetings of The Buffalo Logic Dictionary Project sponsored by The Buffalo Logic Colloquium. The members of the colloquium read drafts before the meetings and were generous with corrections, objections, and suggestions. Usually one 90-minute meeting was devoted to one entry although in some cases, for example, “axiomatic method”, took more than one meeting. Moreover, about half of the entries are rewrites of similarly named entries in the 1995 first edition. Besides the help received from people in Buffalo, help from elsewhere was received by email. We gratefully acknowledge the following: José Miguel Sagüillo, John Zeis, Stewart Shapiro, Davis Plache, Joseph Ernst, Richard Hull, Concha Martinez, Laura Arcila, James Gasser, Barry Smith, Randall Dipert, Stanley Ziewacz, Gerald Rising, Leonard Jacuzzo, George Boger, William Demopolous, David Hitchcock, John Dawson, Daniel Halpern, William Lawvere, John Kearns, Ky Herreid, Nicolas Goodman, William Parry, Charles Lambros, Harvey Friedman, George Weaver, Hughes Leblanc, James Munz, Herbert Bohnert, Robert Tragesser, David Levin, Sriram Nambiar, and others. -/- . (shrink)

This paper draws together as many as possible of the clues and pieces of the puzzle surrounding T. S. Eliot’s “infamous” literary term “objective correlative”. Many different scholars have claimed many different sources for the term, in Pound, Whitman, Baudelaire, Washington Allston, Santayana, Husserl, Nietzsche, Newman, Walter Pater, Coleridge, Russell, Bradley, Bergson, Bosanquet, Schopenhauer and Arnold. This paper aims to rewrite this list by surveying those individuals who, in different ways, either offer the truest claim to being the source (...) of the term, or contributed the most to Eliot’s development of it: Allston, Husserl, Bradley and Bergson. What the paper will argue is that Eliot’s possible inspiration for the term is more indebted to the idealist tradition, and Bergson’s aesthetic development of it, than to the phenomenology of Husserl. (shrink)

Essay review of William R. Newman: Newton the alchemist: science, enigma, and the quest for nature’s “secret fire.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019, 560 pp, $39.95.

In 1966 Gene Roddenberry, then a relatively unknown TV writer, created what was to become a cultural sensation. From cell phones and tablets, to MRI machines and medical jet injectors, Star Trek has undoubtedly anticipated much of the technology that we take for granted today. Moreover, the disagreements, fights and jokes between Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy) were expertly crafted for dramatic impact. But I’m not writing this to (...) confess to you my obsessive infatuation with the Star Trek universe. Instead I want to discuss how the beliefs and practices of Vulcans like Spock are similar to those of the Stoic school of philosophy. (shrink)

I argue, through appeal to the distinction between analysis and decomposition described by Dummett, that Wittgenstein employs both of those notions in the Tractatus. I then bring this interpretation to bear upon the issue of propositional unity, where I formulate an objection to the views of both Leonard Linksy and José Zalabardo. I show that both Linsky and Zalabardo fail to acknowledge the distinction between analysis and decomposition present in the Tractatus, and that they consequently mischaracterise Wittgenstein’s position with (...) respect to propositional unity. (shrink)

Dharmakīrti’s (c. seventh century) Examination of Relations (Sambandhaparīkṣā) is unique in the Indian Buddhist canon for its being the only extant root text devoted entirely to the topic of the ontological status of relations. But the core thesis of this treatise—that relations are only nominally real—is in prima facie tension with another claim that is central to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology: that there exists some kind of “natural relation” (svabhāvapratibandha) that reliably underwrites inferences. Understanding how Dharmakīrti can consistently rely on natural relations (...) to prop up his presentation of inferential reasoning while at the same time advancing an anti-realist account of relations is critical for making sense of his system of logic and epistemology, which came to be nearly universally adopted in Tibetan Buddhism cutting across traditions. Chomden Rikpé Reldri (1227–1305), who was perhaps the most prolific commentator on logic and epistemology in the history of Tibetan philosophy, composed two texts commenting on the Examination of Relations, neither of which have received any scholarly attention to date. In this paper, I provide an introduction to Chomden Reldri’s two commentaries and consider how they may illuminate Dharmakīrti’s text and also what they reveal about the understanding of Dharmakīrti’s account of relations in early Tibetan scholasticism. I then present a translation of Dharmakīrti’s Examination of Relations together with Chomden Reldri’s commentary, Annotations and Topical Outline of the Examination of Relations (’Brel pa brtag pa’i mchan dang sa bcad gnyis). (shrink)

At first glance, Aristotle’s Politics is a repository of dry, professorial lecture notes. Although the work contains the occasional literary reference or historical digression, analysis, argumentation, and socio-political taxonomies predominate. Beneath the surface of such prose, Pangle locates an Aristotle who seeks to involve the reader in dialogical exchange—much like as in a Platonic dialogue—by means of dialectical, rhetorical and literary devices. Pangle—a student of the political theorist Leo Strauss, a translator of Plato, Aristophanes and Sophocles, and the author of (...) books on modern political theorists such as Montesquieu, Locke, and the Federalist Papers—has written a study of the Politics informed not only by a close reading of the text, but also its relationship to modern republicanism, and the conflict between rationalism and religion. A previously published introduction presents what Pangle takes to be Aristotle’s rhetorical strategy in the Politics; it is followed by chapters organized around individual books in the Politics (a chapter each for Politics I, II, and III, and consolidated chapters for Politics IV-VI and VII-VIII—the last of which had been previously published in part). The text is followed by almost 50 pages of notes, notes in which Aquinas is cited as frequently (and sometimes more frequently) than contemporary Aristotle scholars like P. Simpson, R. Kraut, and E. Schütrumpf and Alfarabi is cited more frequently than F. Miller (although by far the most frequently cited authorities are the 19th century scholars F. Susemihl, R.D. Hicks, and above all, W. Newman). The book is clearly a mature work of scholarship, informed by extended reflection on Aristotle’s Politics and the subsequent western tradition of political theory and philological commentary which has responded to it. (shrink)

"Thinking a university for the 21st century" is the name of the research group at San Dámaso University (Madrid) that promotes this book. Over the last few years this group has held regular meetings to discuss the raison d'être of the university: what is a university?, what is its purpose?, what episodes of academic life have been most inspiring in the past?, which difficulties does university life face today?, what will be the future of the university?, what do we want (...) it to become? These are some of the questions that have been asked over the years and which now take the form of writing. Several of the contributions contained in this book have a certain historical orientation: the authors examine the highlights of the search for and communication of knowledge, from antiquity to the present day. Great figures such as Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Vitoria, Newman, Ratzinger and Ortega are featured in these pages. However, this is not a history of university life in the past, but a reflection on the future. The examples of the past set us on the road to the university of the future. Such is the intention of this group of researchers, linked to different Spanish universities and also experienced in other institutions outside our country: they have gathered here to discuss the university we want to build in our present, with an eye to the future. (shrink)

Thomas C. Leonard presents an intellectual history of the Progressive Era from the perspective of economists. It is hard to understate the influence this group had in developing Progressive ideas. Leonard brilliantly details how Progressive economists wielded enormous influence not only in spreading ideas about traditional economic concepts, but also ideas and theories that influenced political and civil liberties. For example, the Progressives gave us the social science professor, the scholar-activist, social worker, muckraking journalist, and expert government advisor. (...) All of these reform-vocations, according to Leonard, sought to replace the invisible hand of the market with the visible hand of the administrative state. In short, Leonard’s book is a must-read for everyone remotely interested in political economy. (shrink)

A theory of cognitive systems individuation is presented and defended. The approach has some affinity with Leonard Talmy's Overlapping Systems Model of Cognitive Organization, and the paper's first section explores aspects of Talmy's view that are shared by the view developed herein. According to the view on offer -- the conditional probability of co-contribution account (CPC) -- a cognitive system is a collection of mechanisms that contribute, in overlapping subsets, to a wide variety of forms of intelligent behavior. Central (...) to this approach is the idea of an integrated system. A formal characterization of integration is laid out in the form of a conditional-probabilitybased measure of the clustering of causal contributors to the production of intelligent behavior. I relate the view to the debate over extended and embodied cognition and respond to objections that have been raised in print by Andy Clark, Colin Klein, and Felipe de Brigard. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is the political theory which holds that coercive laws and policies are justified when and only when they are grounded in reasons of the public. The standard interpretation of public reason liberalism, consensus accounts, claim that the reasons persons share or that persons can derive from shared values determine which policies can be justified. In this paper, I argue that consensus approaches cannot justify fair educational policies and preserving cultural goods. Consensus approaches can resolve some controversies about (...) teaching values in the educational system, such as curriculum choice. But they cannot determine which culture goods, e.g., architecture, artwork, or language ought to be preserved in the education system. Consensus approaches cannot fairly resolve competing claims about these kinds of disputes. -/- I propose that convergence accounts of public reason, which allow individuals to draw on their own comprehensive doctrines in limited ways, can remedy these weaknesses in the mainline public reason tradition. The convergence approach can justify a pluralist state that can advance valuable community goods. John Henry Newman’s advocacy of liberal arts education finds resonance in other cultures, notably among Confucians, illustrating that there can be a shared moral vision and inquiry into the good life across deep substantive disagreements about educational values and policies, once we expand our notion of justification to be more inclusive. (shrink)

When must a specific cognitive habit be called upon to solve a problem? In the subject’s learning process, “knowing-to” is connected with a conscious particular judgment of truth or “aha” moment enacting a new behavioral schema. This paper comments on recent experiments supporting the view that a shift from automatic to controlled forms of inhibition, involving conscious attention, is crucial for detecting errors and activating a new strategy in complex cognitive situations. The part that consciousness plays in this process agrees (...) with its philosophical description as “judge of truth”, and can thus be regarded as an essential precursor to the development of higher cognitive habits. In this regard, John Henry Newman’s explanation of human assent to truth, for which our consciousness of self is always prior, proves to be decisive. (shrink)

This book explores a key concept for human life: friendship. German and Spanish scholars approach friendship from different points of view, integrating philosophical and theological reflections as well as perspectives from other human sciences. In addition to researching biblical texts such as Ecclesiasticus and the Gospel of John, they present the ideas of Christian thinkers such as Alfred of Rieval, St. Thomas Aquinas, John H. Newman, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Edith Stein, Maritain and Benedict XVI. These contributions are read in (...) continuity with ancient philosophy, with particular reference to Aristotle's pages on friendship, which open up this human relationship to a wider context, even linking it to politics. (shrink)