The historical consensus is that logical evidence is special. Whereas empirical evidence is used to support theories within both the natural and social sciences, logic answers solely to a priori evidence. Further, unlike other areas of research that rely upon a priori evidence, such as mathematics, logical evidence is basic. While we can assume the validity of certain inferences in order to establish truths within mathematics and test scientifi c theories, logicians cannot use results from mathematics or the empirical sciences (...) without seemingly begging the question. Appeals to rational intuition and analyticity in order to account for logical knowledge are symptomatic of these commitments to the apriority and basicness of logical evidence. This chapter argues that these historically prevalent accounts of logical evidence are mistaken, and that if we take logical practice seriously we fi nd that logical evidence is rather unexceptional, sharing many similarities to the types of evidence appealed to within other research areas. (shrink)

Artikkeli käsittelee Saul Kripken Ludwig Wittgensteinin myöhemmistä töistä koostamaa merkityskeptistä haastetta, erityisesti niin kutsuttua äärellisyyden ongelmaa. Pääargumentti on, että skeptisen haasteen pääasiallinen vastaaja, semanttinen dispositionalismi, ei uusimmistakaan yrityksistä huolimatta ole kyennyt ratkaisemaan äärettömyyden ongelmaa. Ratkaistakseen ongelman dispositionalistin tulisi selittää, kuinka on mahdollista, että äärellinen puhuja voisi omata disposition käyttää jotain termiä äärettömässä määrässä tapauksia määrätyllä tavalla. Monet dispositionalistit esittävät, että ratkaisu löytyy niin kutsutuista ceteris paribus -ehdoista, joita vastaan Martin Kusch on argumentoinut. Jatkan Kuschin kritiikkiä ja osoitan ceteris paribus (...) -strategian keskeiset ongelmat, minkä lisäksi vastaan myös kahteen näistä ehdoista riippumattomaan dispositionalistiseen strategiaan. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show that animal rights are not necessarily at odds with the use of animals for research. If animals hold basic moral rights similar to those of humans, then we should consequently extend the ethical requirements guiding research with humans to research with animals. The article spells out how this can be done in practice by applying the seven requirements for ethical research with humans proposed by Ezekiel Emanuel, David Wendler and Christine Grady to (...) animal research. These requirements are i) social value, ii) scientific validity, iii) independent review, iv) fair subject selection, v) favorable risk-benefit ratio, vi) informed consent, and vii) respect for research subjects. In practice, this means that we must reform the practice of animal research to make it more similar to research with humans, rather than completely abolish the former. Indeed, if we banned animal research altogether, then we would also deprive animals of its potential benefits – which would be ethically problematic. (shrink)

Marginalized people have used body aesthetic practices, such as clothing and hairstyles, to communicate their worth to the mainstream. One such example is respectability politics, a set of practices developed in post-Reconstruction black communities to prevent sexual assault and convey moral standing to the white mainstream. Respectability politics is an ambivalent strategy. It requires assimilation to white bourgeois aesthetic and ethical standards, and so guides practitioners toward blandness and bodily erasure. Yet, it is an aesthetic practice that cultivates moral agency (...) and helps communities avoid violence and meet social and economic goals. I contrast respectability politics with the anti-assimilationist body aesthetics of Chike Jeffers and Janell Hobson. Because these accounts do not seek to neutralize or erase the body, they fundamentally value black people. As such, they more effectively convey personhood than assimilationist strategies do and also demonstrate the positive role that body aesthetics can play in everyday ethical projects. (shrink)

We argue that deliberative decision-making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.

In this thesis I seek to advance our understanding of what intuitions are. I argue that intuitions are experiences of a certain kind. In particular, they are experiences with representational content, and with a certain phenomenal character. -/- In Chapter 1 I identify our target and provide some important reliminaries. Intuitions are mental states, but which ones? Giving examples helps: a person has an intuition when it seems to her that torturing the innocent is wrong, or that if something is (...) red it is coloured. We can also provide an initial characterisation of the state by saying that it has representational content, often causes belief, and appears to justify belief. In addition, there is something it is like to have an intuition: intuition has a certain phenomenal character. -/- Some argue that intuition does not explain anything which cannot be explained by other mental states. One version of this view takes intuition to reduce to belief. In Chapter 2 I argue that this entails that agents are rationally criticisable in situations where we know they are not, and that such views are therefore untenable. A parallel argument shows that the corresponding approach to perception fails. This suggests a similarity in nature: both intuition and perception are experiences. -/- Others take intuition to reduce to a disposition to have a belief. In Chapter 3 I consider a line of argument against such views, find it unsuccessful, and present two new arguments. One is likely to be dialectically ineffective. The other suffers no such weakness: it shows that the proposed reduction fails. As before, the argument also applies to perception, and suggests that intuition and perception are both experiences. -/- In the remainder of the thesis I develop an account of intuition as an experience. I distinguish between content-specific and attitude-specific phenomenology, and argue that intuition lacks the former (Chapter 4), but has the latter (Chapter 5). This allows us to say what intuition is: it is is an experience with representational content and with attitude-specific phenomenology of a certain kind. -/- In Chapter 6 I put this account of intuition to use. When a person has a perceptual or intuitional experience, I argue that simply having the experience is what makes the subject justified in believing what the experience represents. Moreover, what explains that intuition and perception can justify belief in this way is precisely their phenomenal character. (shrink)

I argue against Barbara Montero's claim that Conservation of Energy has nothing to do with physicalism. I reject her reconstruction of the argument for physicalism from CoE, and offer an alternative reconstruction that better captures the intuitions of those who believe that there is a conflict between interactionist dualism and CoE.

In some philosophical arguments an important role is played by the claim that certain situations differ from each other with respect to phenomenology. One class of such arguments are minimal pair arguments. These have been used to argue that there is cognitive phenomenology, that high-level properties are represented in perceptual experience, that understanding has phenomenology, and more. I argue that facts about our mental lives systematically block such arguments, reply to a range of objections, and apply my critique to some (...) examples from the literature. (shrink)

This report by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage addresses how countries can make fair progress towards the goal of universal coverage. It explains the relevant tradeoffs between different desirable ends and offers guidance on how to make these tradeoffs.

This paper argues that, contrary to common opinion, intuition can result from conscious reasoning. It also discusses why this matters.

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)

La cobertura universal de salud está en el centro de la acción actual para fortalecer los sistemas de salud y mejorar el nivel y la distribución de la salud y los servicios de salud. Este documento es el informe fi nal del Grupo Consultivo de la OMS sobre la Equidad y Cobertura Universal de Salud. Aquí se abordan los temas clave de la justicia (fairness) y la equidad que surgen en el camino hacia la cobertura universal de salud. Por lo (...) tanto, el informe es pertinente para cada agente que infl uye en ese camino y en particular para los gobiernos, ya que se encargan de supervisar y guiar el progreso hacia la cobertura universal de salud. (shrink)

This report from the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage offers advice on how to make progress fairly towards universal health coverage.

A simple reductive view of intuition holds that intuition is a type of belief. That an agent who intuits that p sometimes believes that p is false is often thought to demonstrate that the simple reductive view is false. I show that this argument is inconclusive, but also that an argument for the same conclusion can be rebuilt using the notion of rational criticisability. I then use that notion to argue that perception is also not reducible to belief, and that (...) neither intuition nor perception is reducible to credence. (shrink)

This thesis seeks to advance our understanding of what intuitions are. I argue that there is a class of mental states deserving of the label ‘intuition’, and which is a good candidate for a psychological kind, a kind which cuts the mind at its natural joints. These mental states are experiences of a certain kind. In particular, they are experiences with representational content, and with a certain phenomenal character.

A de minimis risk is defined as a risk that is so small that it may be legitimately ignored when making a decision. While ignoring small risks is common in our day-to-day decision making, attempts to introduce the notion of a de minimis risk into the framework of decision theory have run up against a series of well-known difficulties. In this paper, I will develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of overcoming two major obstacles to the modelling (...) of de minimis risk. The key move is to introduce, into decision theory, a non-probabilistic conception of risk known as normic risk. (shrink)

Is it right to convict a person of a crime on the basis of purely statistical evidence? Many who have considered this question agree that it is not, posing a direct challenge to legal probabilism – the claim that the criminal standard of proof should be understood in terms of a high probability threshold. Some defenders of legal probabilism have, however, held their ground: Schoeman (1987) argues that there are no clear epistemic or moral problems with convictions based on purely (...) statistical evidence, and speculates that our aversion to such convictions may be nothing more than an irrational bias. More recently, Hedden and Colyvan (2019, section VI) describe our reluctance to convict on the basis of purely statistical evidence as an ‘intuition’, but suggest that there may be no ‘in principle’ problem with such convictions (see also Papineau, forthcoming, section 6). In this paper, I argue that there is, in some cases, an in principle problem with a conviction based upon statistical evidence alone – namely, it commits us to a precedent which, if consistently followed through, could lead to the deliberate conviction of an innocent person. I conclude with some reflections on the idea that the criminal justice system should strive to maximise the accuracy of its verdicts – and the related idea that we should each strive to maximise the accuracy of our beliefs. (shrink)

In the 20th century, the term “media logic” was introduced to denote the influence of independent mass media on political systems and other institutions. In recent years the idea has been reworked and labeled “mediatization” to widen the framework by including new media and new areas of application. In Section Two the paper discusses different conceptualizations. It is argued that even if they bring new insights, they cannot be unified into one concept, and that they also lack a consistent definition (...) of digital media. Section three provides a definition of digital media in order to identify new trajectories made possible by these media, which have led into a new media matrix built around the internet and mobile devices. It will be argued that the new media matrix cannot be understood from a point of view defined by the framework of 20th century mass media because digital media open new trajectories and because in the new matrix the previously existing media have had to transform themselves. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the claim that justification is closed under conjunction, and confront its most alarming consequence — that one can have justification for believing propositions that are unlikely to be true, given one's evidence.

In this paper I explore some ideas inspired by Federico Picinali’s Justice In-Between: A Study of Intermediate Criminal Verdicts. Picinali makes a case for the introduction of intermediate options in criminal trials – verdicts with consequences that are harsher than an acquittal, but not so harsh as a conviction. From a certain perspective, the absence of intermediate options in criminal trials is puzzling – out of kilter with much of our everyday decision-making and, perhaps, with the recommendations of expected utility (...) theory. I will argue, however, that the lack of intermediate options is much less puzzling when put in the context of our ordinary practices of blame and non-legal punishment. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer reasons for thinking that two prominent sceptical arguments in the literature – the underdetermination-based sceptical argument and the closure-based sceptical argument – are less philosophically interesting than is commonly supposed. The underdetermination-based argument begs the question against a non-sceptic and can be dismissed with little fanfare. The closure-based argument, though perhaps not question-begging per se, does rest upon contentious assumptions that a non-sceptic is under no pressure to accept.

The article presents a conceptual framework for distinguishing different sorts of heterogeneous digital materials. The hypothesis is that a wide range of heterogeneous data resources can be characterized and classified due to their particular configurations of hypertext features such as scripts, links, interactive processes, and time scalings, and that the hypertext configuration is a major but not sole source of the messiness of big data. The notion of hypertext will be revalidated, placed at the center of the interpretation of networked (...) digital media, and used in the analysis of the fast-growing amounts of heterogeneous digital collections, assemblages, and corpora. The introduction summarizes the wider background of a fast-changing data landscape. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 6, Issue 2-3, pp 120 - 142 This paper aims to contribute to the debate over epistemic versus non-epistemic readings of the ‘hinges’ in Wittgenstein’s _On Certainty_. I follow Marie McGinn’s and Daniele Moyal-Sharrock’s lead in developing an analogy between mathematical sentences and certainties, and using the former as a model for the latter. However, I disagree with McGinn’s and Moyal-Sharrock’s interpretations concerning Wittgenstein’s views of both relata. I argue that mathematical sentences as well as certainties are (...) true and are propositions; that some of them can be epistemically justified; that in some senses they are not prior to empirical knowledge; that they are not ineffable; and that their primary function is epistemic as much as it is semantic. (shrink)

According to the principle of Conjunction Closure, if one has justification for believing each of a set of propositions, one has justification for believing their conjunction. The lottery and preface paradoxes can both be seen as posing challenges for Closure, but leave open familiar strategies for preserving the principle. While this is all relatively well-trodden ground, a new Closure-challenging paradox has recently emerged, in two somewhat different forms, due to Backes :3773–3787, 2019a) and Praolini :715–726, 2019). This paradox synthesises elements (...) of the lottery and the preface and is designed to close off the familiar Closure-preserving strategies. By appealing to a normic theory of justification, I will defend Closure in the face of this new paradox. Along the way I will draw more general conclusions about justification, normalcy and defeat, which bear upon what Backes :2877–2895, 2019b) has dubbed the ‘easy defeat’ problem for the normic theory. (shrink)

The standard of proof applied in civil trials is the preponderance of evidence, often said to be met when a proposition is shown to be more than 50% likely to be true. A number of theorists have argued that this 50%+ standard is too weak – there are circumstances in which a court should find that the defendant is not liable, even though the evidence presented makes it more than 50% likely that the plaintiff’s claim is true. In this paper, (...) I will recapitulate the familiar arguments for this thesis, before defending a more radical one: The 50%+ standard is also too strong – there are circumstances in which a court should find that a defendant is liable, even though the evidence presented makes it less than 50% likely that the plaintiff’s claim is true. I will argue that the latter thesis follows naturally from the former once we accept that the parties in a civil trial are to be treated equally. I will conclude by sketching an alternative interpretation of the civil standard of proof. (shrink)

Relativism can be found in all philosophical traditions and subfields of philosophy. It is also a central idea in the social sciences, the humanities, religion and politics. This is the first volume to map relativistic motifs in all areas of philosophy, synchronically and diachronically. It thereby provides essential intellectual tools for thinking about contemporary issues like cultural diversity, the plurality of the sciences, or the scope of moral values. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism is an outstanding major reference (...) source on this fundamental topic. The 57 chapters by a team of international contributors are divided into nine parts: Relativism in non-Western philosophical traditions Relativism in Western philosophical traditions Relativism in ethics Relativism in political and legal philosophy Relativism in epistemology Relativism in metaphysics Relativism in philosophy of science Relativism in philosophy of language and mind Relativism in other areas of philosophy. Essential reading for students and researchers in all branches of philosophy, this handbook will also be of interest to those in related subjects such as politics, religion, sociology, cultural studies and literature. (shrink)

A moral requirement R1 is said to be lexically prior to a moral requirement R2 just in case we are morally obliged to uphold R1 at the expense of R2 – no matter how many times R2 must be violated thereby. While lexical priority is a feature of many ethical theories, and arguably a part of common sense morality, attempts to model it within the framework of decision theory have led to a series of problems – a fact which is (...) sometimes spun as a ‘decision theoretic critique’ of lexical priority. In this paper, I develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of modelling lexical priority while avoiding all extant problems. This will involve introducing several new ingredients into the standard decision theoretic framework, including multidimensional utilities, de minimis risks, and the means to represent two different conceptions of risk. (shrink)

Research on preference reversals has demonstrated a disproportionate influence of outcome probability on choices between monetary gambles. The aim was to investigate the hypothesis that this is a prominence effect originally demonstrated for riskless choice. Another aim was to test the structure compatibility hypothesis as an explanation of the effect. The hypothesis implies that probability should be the prominent attribute when compared with value attributes both in a choice and a preference rating procedure. In Experiment 1, two groups of undergraduates (...) were presented with medical treatments described by two value attributes (effectiveness and pain-relief). All participants performed both a matching task and made preference ratings. In the latter task, outcome probabilities were added to the descriptions of the medical treatments for one of the groups. In line with the hypothesis, this reduced the prominence effect on the preference ratings observed for effectiveness. In Experiment 2, a matching task was used to demonstrate that probability was considered more important by a group of participating undergraduates than the value attributes. Furthermore, in both choices and preference ratings the expected prominence effect was found for probability. (shrink)

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Hawley.1Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Although we may have to rely on certain communities, (...) I argue that social construction doesn’t imply a demand for trust because the relevant communities don’t take on any relevant commitments. Bitcoin is indeed trust-free. (shrink)

In this paper we present an overview, with historical and critical remarks, of two articles by S. Jaśkowski ([20, 21] 1948 and [22, 23] 1949), which contain the oldest known formulation of a paraconsistent logic. Jaśkowski has built the logic – he termed discussive (D2) – by defining two new connectives and by introducing a modal translation map from D2 systems into Lewis’ modal logic S5. Discussive systems, for their formal details and their original philosophical justification, have attracted discrete attention (...) among experts. Indeed, in what follows, after having introduced Jaśkowski methodology of building D2 and his main philosophical motivations for providing such a system, we will explore some of the main contributions to the development of D2. (shrink)

There is a type of metaphysical picture that surfaces in a range of philosophical discussions, is of intrinsic interest, and yet remains ill-understood. According to this picture, the world contains a range of standpoints relative to which different facts obtain. Any true representation of the world cannot but adopt a particular standpoint. The aim of this paper is to propose a regimentation of a metaphysics that underwrites this picture. Key components are a factive notion of metaphysical relativity, a deflationary notion (...) of adopting standpoints, and two kinds of valid inference, one that allows one to abandon standpoints and one that does not. To better understand how theories formulated in terms of this framework are situated in dialectical space, I sketch a theory in the philosophy of time that admits both temporal and atemporal standpoints. (shrink)

This article advocates evangelical environmental care by grounding an ethic of nature at the centre of evangelical theology, namely, in Christ and his resurrection. As Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 15, the continuity between our earthly bodies and our resurrected bodies entails that we should take care of our bodies. Drawing on Romans 8, I argue that the same line of reasoning applies to nature: the continuity between creation and the new creation entails that we should take care of (...) nature. Finally, I consider some objections to my argument regarding its possible eschatological consequences. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the thought that the phenomenal appearances that accompany mental states are somehow only there, or only real, from the standpoint of the subject of those mental states. The world differs across subjects in terms of which appearances obtain. Not only are subjects standpoints across which the world varies, subjects are standpoints that we can ‘adopt’ in our own theorizing about the world (or stand back from). The picture that is suggested by these claims (...) has an appeal but is at the same time obscure and stands in need of regimentation. This paper explores and motivates a metaphysical account of what it is for subjects to be standpoints, what it is to adopt standpoints in our representations and, most importantly, how these notions might help us better understand the subjective character of conscious mental states. Some well-known observations by Thomas Nagel serve as starting points and the paper concludes by revisiting Nagel’s argument for the inevitable incompleteness of objective accounts of mental states, which will be reframed in terms of the central commitments of the proposed framework. (shrink)

The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards model-based approaches. In recent work, Alisa Bokulich has argued that idealization has a central role to play in explanation. Bokulich claims that certain highly-idealized, structural models can be explanatory, even though they are not considered explanatory by causal, mechanistic, or covering law accounts of explanation. This paper focuses on Bokulich’s account in order to make the more general claim that there are problems with maintaining that a (...) structural criterion can capture the way that highly-idealized models explain. This paper examines Bokulich’s claim that the structural model explanation of quantum wavefunction scarring, featuring semiclassical mechanics, is deeper than the explanation provided by the local quantum model. The challenge for Bokulich is to show that the semiclassical model answers a wider range of w-questions, as this is her method of assessing structural information. I look at two reasonable approaches employing w-questions, and I argue that neither approach is ultimately satisfactory. Because structural similarity has preferences for more fundamental models, I argue that the local quantum model provides explanations that at least as deep as the semiclassical ones. The criterion either wrongly identifies all models as explanatory, or prefers models from fundamental theory. Either way, it cannot capture the way that highly-idealized models explain. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Marcello Di Bello’s criticisms of the ‘normic account’ of the criminal standard of proof. In so doing, I further elaborate on what the normic account predicts about certain significant legal categories of evidence, including DNA and fingerprint evidence and eyewitness identifications.

One of the most intriguing claims in Sven Rosenkranz’s Justification as Ignorance is that Timothy Williamson’s celebrated anti-luminosity argument can be resisted when it comes to the condition ~K~KP—the condition that one is in no position to know that one is in no position to know P. In this paper, I critically assess this claim.

The article discuss the interpretation of modernity in Bruno Latours 'The end of modernity'. On the one hand, it argues that the notion of modernity should be modified as nobody can be only modern. On the other hand, it argues that the notion of modernity changes over the ages and that we are in the middle of a process best understood as a new modernization of modernity.

In a recent paper in this journal Duncan Pritchard responds to an objection to the modal account of risk pressed by Ebert, Smith and Durbach ( 2020 ). In this paper, I expand upon the objection and argue that it still stands. I go on to consider a more general question raised by this exchange – whether risk is ‘objective’, or whether it is something that varies from one perspective to another.

The tremendous advances of research into artificial intelligence as well as neuroscience made over the last two to three decades have given further support to a renewed interest into philosophical discussions of the mind-body problem. Especially the last decade has seen a revival of panpsychist and idealist considerations, often focused on solving philosophical puzzles like the socalled hard problem of consciousness.1–9 While a number of respectable philosophers advocate some sort of panpsychistic solution to the mind-body problem now, fewer advocate that (...) idealism can contribute substantially to the debate. Interest in idealism has nevertheless risen again, as can be seen also from recent overview articles and collections of works.10–14 The working hypothesis here is that a properly formulated idealism can not only provide an alternative view of the mind/matter gap, but that this new view will also shed light on open questions in our common scientific, i.e. materialist, world view. To investigate this possibility, idealism first of all needs a model for the integration of modern science which allows for a mathematically consistent reinterpretation of the physical world as a limiting case of a both material and non-material world, which would make the outcome of idealistic considerations accessible to scientific investigation. To develop such a model I will first try to explain what I mean when I speak of a ‘scientifically tenable’ idealism, including a formulation of the emanation problem which for idealism replaces the interaction problem, then give a very brief summary of the available elements of such a theory in the philosophical literature, before sketching out some ‘design questions’ which have to be answered upon the construction of such models, and finally put forward a first model for a scientifically tenable objective idealism. (shrink)

Since World War II the concept of Information has received several new definitions. Information can be understood as knowledge in general, as theoretical, formalized knowledge in general or as knowledge related to specific domains or specific representational forms. Because of these mutually inconsistent concepts the common traits are to be found in a perspective transcendent to those theories. The central cultural changes, it is argued, take place on the level of the societal knowledge infrastructure, evolving from the knowledge infrastructure of (...) the industrial societies as a long-term secularization process, resulting in new forms for representation and manipulation of knowledge. The process is seen as rooted in changes of the primary domains for knowledge extraction and in a change in the human relations to the languages in which we interpret the relations to nature. (shrink)

The article discusses the limitations of psycho-physical parallellism and the implications of a pscycho-physical interaction paradigm considering the notion Downward Causation. The focus is on the notion of levels in nature and their interrelations, and it argues that the notion of rule-based systems should be considered a subcategory of rule-generating systems partly based on redundancy functions rather than rules.

Any explanation of one fact in terms of another will appeal to some sort of connection between the two. In a causal explanation, the connection might be a causal mechanism or law. But not all explanations are causal, and neither are all explanatory connections. For example, in explaining the fact that a given barn is red in terms of the fact that it is crimson, we might appeal to a non-causal connection between things’ being crimson and their being red. Many (...) such connections, like this one, are general rather than particular. I call these general non-causal explanatory connections 'laws of metaphysics'. In this paper I argue that some of these laws are to be found in the world at its most fundamental level, forming a bridge between fundamental reality and everything else. It is only by admitting fundamental laws, I suggest, that we can do justice to the explanatory relationship between what is fundamental and what is not. And once these laws are admitted, we are able to provide a nice resolution of the puzzle of why there are any non-fundamental facts in the first place. (shrink)

In the present study it was shown that both decision heuristics and social value orientation play important roles in the building of preferences. This was revealed in decision tasks in which participants were deciding about candidates for a job position. An eye-tracking equipment was applied in order to register participants´ information acquisition. It was revealed that participants performing well on a series of heuristics tasks (availability, representativeness, anchoríng & adjustment,and attribution) including a confidence judgment also behaved more accurately than low (...) performers in the fulfillment of the preference tasks. It was also established that the high performers were not as influenced by whether uncertainty was presented in terms of probabilities or in terms of frequencies as was the low performers. With regard to social value orientation the results revealed that decision processing differences were more systematic between cooperators and competitors than between cooperators and individualists. Also, the cooperators did not seem to attend more to proenvironmental goals than to profit goals in the evaluation of the candidates. Finally, it was shown that accountable cooperators invested more time in their decisions than those that were not accountable, and that no such difference was observed between accountable and not accountable competitors or individualists. (shrink)

After about a century since the first attempts by Bohr, the interpretation of quantum theory is still a field with many open questions.1 In this article a new interpretation of quantum theory is suggested, motivated by philosophical considerations. Based on the findings that the ’weirdness’ of quantum theory can be understood to derive from a vanishing distinguishability of indiscernible particles, and the observation that a similar vanishing distinguishability is found for bundle theories in philosophical ontology, the claim is made that (...) quantum theory can be interpreted in an intelligible way by positing a bundle-theoretic view of objective idealism instead of materialism as the underlying fundamental nature of reality. (shrink)

Several theistic arguments are formulated as arguments for the best explanation. This article discusses how one can determine that some phenomenon actually needs an explanation. One way to demonstrate that an explanation is needed is by providing one. The proposed explanation ought to either make the occurrence of the phenomenon in question more probable than it occurring by chance, or it has to sufficiently increase our understanding of the phenomenon. A second way to demonstrate that an explanation is needed is (...) to show that the phenomenon in question both violates our expectations and is particularly noticeable. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept that, as well as having a right that others not harm us, we also have a right that others not subject us to a risk of harm. And yet, when we attempt to spell out precisely what this ‘right against risk imposition’ involves, we encounter a series of notorious puzzles. Existing attempts to deal with these puzzles have tended to focus on the nature of rights – but I propose an approach that focusses instead on the nature (...) of risk. The key move is to distinguish two different ways in which to conceptualise the risk that a given action presents – one of which is linked to the notion of probability and the other to the notion of normalcy. (shrink)