The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) is widely regarded as the greatest and most significant English-speaking philosopher and often seen as having had the most influence on the way philosophy is practiced today in the West. His reputation is based not only on the quality of his philosophical thought but also on the breadth and scope of his writings, which ranged over metaphysics, epistemology, morals, politics, religion, and aesthetics. The Handbook's 38 newly commissioned chapters are divided into six parts: (...) Central Themes; Metaphysics and Epistemology; Passion, Morality and Politics; Aesthetics, History, and Economics; Religion; Hume and the Enlightenment; and After Hume. The volume also features an introduction from editor Paul Russell and a chapter on Hume's biography. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to outline Dorothy Emmet's (1904–2000) account of perception in The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (published in 1945). Emmet's account of perception is part of a wider attempt to rehabilitate metaphysics in the face of logical positivism and verificationism (of the kind espoused most famously by A. J. Ayer). It is thus part of an attempt to stem the tide of anti-metaphysical thought that had become widespread in British philosophy by the middle of the twentieth (...) century. Emmet does not fit neatly into the traditional story of twentieth-century British philosophy. She draws on figures like A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson much more extensively than figures like Russell or Moore – and thus straddles the so-called ‘analytic-continental divide.’ My aim in this paper is to put Emmet on the map of twentieth-century British thought by outlining her philosophy of perception, highlighting her proposals for a way forward for metaphysics in a time of crisis, and identifying the ways she preempts movements in contemporary philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Revealed that Bertrand Russell's Wisdom of the West was most likely actually written by its "editor", Paul Foulkes, in view of the prominence in the text of the ideas of Foulkes' teacher, John Anderson. That suspicion later turned out to be true.

Twenty first century is posing unprecedented challenges for the human existence and development. This era has witnessed awesome economic & technological growth, increased connectedness but great poverty, malnutrition, anxiety, mental stress and environmental degradation. Thus, this time depicts great contradiction, uncertainty, and risk. Accordingly, in this era a holistic education system has to deal with the challenges such as population growth, terrorism, environmental degradation, hegemony of machines, mental stress, cultivating creativity, bridging the skill and wisdom gap, and expanding human potential (...) etc. To find a sustainable solution to such challenges, we need to develop a holistic education system which acknowledges various dimension of human being. For this task, this paper will try to highlight some philosophical themes which are commonly suggested by various prominent thinkers such as M.K. Gandhi, R.N. Tagore, J. Krishnamurti, S. Radhakrishnan etc. in India, and J. Dewey, I. Illich, and B. Russell etc. in the west. They have put forward their philosophy to discuss the aims of education which are relevant to this century. In this paper, we will analyze their views from the perspective of the challenges that the twenty-first century world is going to face. Our investigation will analyze agreements and disagreements among the approaches taken by these educators. However, the focus will be on the commonalities, so that we can identify some philosophical themes which can work as the solid foundation for holistic model of education. (shrink)

Sheep production is the most representative livestock activities in Brazil and in the world. However, the reproductive performance of these animals is determined by factors genetic, physical environment, management and, especially, nutritional. Thirty half-breed lambs from Dorper × Santa Inês were used, with initial weight and age of 31.87 ± 0.5 kg and 157 days, respectively. These animals were prepared on a diet with three food levels (ad libitum, 30% and 70%). Morphometric measurements were measured at intervals of 16 to (...) 20 days in 56 experimental days. The measurements performed were scrotal circumference (CE), chest circumference (CT), body condition score (ECC), withers height (AC) and scrotal bag thickness (EBE), body weight (CP) and semen collection. Interaction occurrence for biometric measurements between food levels and age (p <0.05). The TC and ECC values were higher in animals fed ad libitum (p <0.001). EBE had higher values in animals ad libitum and at 211 days of age (p <0.001). The CP was increasing for the animals ad libitum and (p <0.05) throughout the experiment, while the T30 was only in the initial period. T70 animals did not grow during the whole experiment. CE was influenced by diet (p <0.001) and age (p <0.001) independently. So that animals under food restriction had less development and was higher in older animals. The AC values were influenced only by age (p <0.001), demonstrating the effect of age growth. We conclude that it is not advantageous to submit lambs, it corrects food reproduction. Although it was not possible to assess whether initial malnutrition would bring future problems for the animal's seminal quality, it proved to be immensely negative for the onset of puberty and the development of reproductive structures. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS AKUMBUGU, F. E., et al. 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Prediction of postpubertal reproductive potential according to prepubertal body weight, testicular size, and testosterone concentration using multiple regression analysis in Kıvırcık ram lambs. Turkish journal of veterinary and animal sciences, v. 32, n. 5, p. 335-343, 2008. JUCÁ, A. F. et al. Performance of the Santa Ines breed raised on pasture in semiarid tropical regions and factors that explain trait variation. Tropical animal health and production, v. 46, n. 7, p. 1249-1256, 2014. FOURIE, P. J. et al. Scrotal, testicular and semen characteristics of young Dorper rams managed under intensive and extensive conditions. Small Ruminant Research, v. 54, n. 1-2, p. 53-59, 2004. GUNN, R. G.; SIM, D. A.; HUNTER, E. A. Effects of nutrition in utero and in early life on the subsequent lifetime reproductive performance of Scottish Blackface ewes in two management systems. Animal Science, v. 60, n. 2, p. 223-230, 1995. HÖTZEL, M. J. et al. 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LOUW, D. F. J.; JOUBERT, D. M. Puberty in the male Dorper sheep and Boer goat. S. Afr. J. Agric. Sci, v. 7, p. 509-520, 1964. MAIA, A. S. C.; SILVA, R. G.; ANDRADE, P. C. Efeitos da temperatura e da movimentação do ar sobre o isolamento térmico do velo de ovinos em câmara climática. Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia, v. 38, n. 1, p. 104-108, 2009. MARTINS, R. D. et al. Avaliação da sazonalidade reprodutiva de carneiros Santa Inês criados no Distrito Federal. R. Bras. Zootec., Viçosa, v. 32, n. 6, supl. 1, p. 1594-1603, Dec. 2003. MENDES, A. M. P. et al. Zoneamento bioclimático para a raça ovina Dorper no Estado de Pernambuco. Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira, v. 49, n. 12, p. 986-993, 2014. MOULLA, F. et al. Characterization of the onset of puberty in Tazegzawt lambs, an endangered Algerian sheep: Body weight, thoracic perimeter, testicular growth, and seminal parameters. Veterinary world, v. 11, n. 7, p. 889, 2018. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NRC). Nutrient Requirements of Small Ruminants: Sheep, Goats, Cervids, and New World Camelids. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2007. NOTTER, D. R.; LUCAS, J. R.; MCCLAUGHERTY, F. S. Accuracy of estimation of testis weight from in situ testis measures in ram lambs. Theriogenology, v. 15, n. 2, p. 227-234, 1981. SEJIAN, V. et al. Effect of body condition score on the allometric measurements and reproductive performance of Garole X Malpura ewes under hot semi-arid environment. Journal of Dairy, Veterinary & Animal Research, v. 2, n. 6, p. 1-4, 2015. PACHECO, A.; MADELLA-OLIVEIRA, A. F.; QUIRINO, C. R. Biometria e formas dos testículos em cordeiros da raça Santa Inês explorados em regime de manejo intensivo. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Agrárias, v. 5, n. 1, p. 123-128, 2010. REGO NETO, A. A. et al. Population genetic structure of Santa Inês sheep in Brazil. Tropical animal health and production, v. 50, n. 3, p. 503-508, 2018. RHIND, S. M. Effects of maternal nutrition on fetal and neonatal reproductive development and function. Animal Reproduction Science, v. 82, p. 169-181, 2004. RIBEIRO, E. L. A.; GONZÁLEZ-GARCÍA, E. Indigenous sheep breeds in Brazil: potential role for contributing to the sustainability of production systems. Tropical animal health and production, v. 48, n. 7, p. 1305-1313, 2016. RIBEIRO, M. S. et al. Repeatability and effect of age on reproductive characteristics in Santa Ines rams. Archivos de zootecnia, v. 67, n. 257, p. 143-147, 2018. RUSSEL, A. J. F.; DONEY, J. M.; GUNN, R. G. Subjective assessment of body fat in live sheep. The Journal of Agricultural Science, v. 72, n. 3, p. 451-454, 1969. SILVA, N. V. et al. Medidas in vivo e da carcaça e constituintes não carcaça de ovinos alimentados com diferentes níveis do subproduto agroindustrial da goiaba. Revista Brasileira de Saúde e Produção Animal, v. 17, n. 1, p. 101-115, 2016. SILVA, P. et al. Influence of placentally mediated fetal growth restriction on the onset of puberty in male and female lambs. Reproduction, v. 122, n. 3, p. 375-383, 2001. SIQUEIRA FILHO, E. R. Influência dos níveis protéicos fornecidos na dieta sobre o sistema reprodutivo de carneiros. 2007. 75 f. Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual Paulista, Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia de Botucatu, 2007. SOUZA, J. S da et al. Biometric measurements of Santa Inês meat sheep reared on Brachiaria brizantha pastures in Northeast Brazil. Plos one, v. 14, n. 7, p. e0219343, 2019. (shrink)

● Sergio Cremaschi, The non-existing Island. The chapter discusses how the cleavage between the Continental and the Anglo-American philosophies originated, the (self-)images of both philosophical worlds, the converging rediscoveries from the Seventies, and recent ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. I argue that pragmatism provides an important counter-instance to the familiar self-images and the fashionable ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. The conclusions are: (i) the only place where Continental philosophy exists (as Euro-Communism one decade ago) is America; (ii) less obviously, also analytic philosophy (...) does not exist, or does no more exist as a current or a paradigm; what does exist is, on the one hand, philosophy of language and, on the other, philosophy of mind, that is, two disciplines; (iii) the dissolution of analytic philosophy as a school has been highly fruitful, precisely in so far as it has left room for disciplines and research programmes; (iv) what is left, of the Anglo-American/Continental cleavage is primarily differences in styles, depending partly on intellectual traditions, partly owing to sociology, history, institutional frameworks; these differences should not be blurred by rash ecumenism; besides, theoretical differences are alive as ever, but within both camps; finally, there is indeed a lag (not a difference) in the appropriation of intellectual techniques by most schools of 'Continental' philosophy, and this should be overcome through appropriation of what the best 'analytic' philosophers have produced. ● Michael Strauss, Language and sense-perception: an aspect of analytic philosophy. To test an assertion about one fact by comparing it with perceived reality seems quite unproblematic. But the very possibility of such a procedure is incompatible with the intellectualistic basis of logical positivism and atomism (as it is for example to be found in Russell's Analysis of Mind). According to the intellectualistic approach pure sensation is meaningless. Sensation receives its meaning and order from the intellect through interpretation, which is performed with the help of linguistic tools, i.e. words and sentences. Before being interpreted, sensation is not a picture or a representation, it is neither true nor false, neither an illusion nor knowledge; it does not tell us anything; it is a lifeless and order-less matter. But how can a thought (or a proposition) be compared with such a lifeless matter? This difficulty confronts the intellectualist, if on the one hand he admits the necessity of comparing thought with sense-perception, and on the other hand presupposes that we possess only intellectual and no immediate perceptual understanding of what we see and hear. In this paper I give a critical exposition of three attempts, made by Russell, Neurath and Wittgenstein, to solve this problem. The first attempt adheres to strict conventionalism, the second tends to naturalism and the third leads to an amended, very moderate version of conventionalism. This amended conventionalism looks at sense impressions as being a peculiar language, which includes primary symbols, i.e. symbols not founded on convention and not being in need of interpretation. ● Ernst Tugendhat, Phenomenology and language analysis. The paper, first published in German in 1970, by which Tugendhat gave a start to the German rediscovery of analytic philosophy. The author stages a confrontation between phenomenology and language analysis. He argues that language analysis does not differ from phenomenology as far as the topics dealt with are concerned; instead, both currents are quite different in method. The author argues that language-analytic philosophy does not simply lay out of the mainstream of transcendental philosophy, but that instead it challenges this tradition on the very level of foundations. The author criticizes the linguistic-analytic approach centred on the subject as well as any object-centred approach, while proposing inter-subjective understanding through language as the new universal framework. This is, when construed in so general terms, the same program of hermeneutics, though in a more basic version. ● Jürgen Habermas, Language game, intention and meaning. On a few suggestions by Sellars and Wittgenstein. The paper, first published in German in 1975, in which Habermas announces his own linguistic turn through a discovery of speech acts. In this essay the author wants to work out a categorical framework for a communicative theory of society; he takes Wittgenstein's concept of language game as a Leitfade and, besides, he takes advantage also of Wilfried Sellars's quasi-transcendental account of the genesis of intentionality. His goal is to single out the problems connected with a theory of consciousness oriented in a logical-linguistic sense. ● Zvie Bar-On, Isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. This essay presents the problem of the formal relationship between speech acts and intentional states as an essential part of the perennial philosophical question of the relation between language and thought. I attempt to show how this problem had been dealt with by two prominent philosophers of different camps in our century, Edmund Husserl and John Searle. Both of them wrote extensively about the theory of intentionality. I point out an interesting, as it were unintended, continuity of their work on that theory. Searle started where Husserl left off 80 years earlier. Their meeting point could be used as the first clue in our search. They both adopted in effect the same distinction between two basic aspects of the intentional experience: its content or matter, and its quality or mode. Husserl did not yet have the concept of a speech act as contradistinguished from an intentional state. The working hypothesis, however, which he suggested, could be used as a second clue for the further elaboration of the theory. The relationship of the two levels, the mental and the linguistic, which remained for Husserl in the background only, became the cornerstone of Searle' s inquiry. He employed the speech act as the model and analysed the intentional experience by means of the conceptual apparatus of his own theory of speech acts. This procedure enabled him to mark out a number of parallelisms and correlations between the two levels. This procedure explains the phenomenon of the partial isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. ● Roberta de Monticelli, Ontology. A dialogue among the linguistic philosopher, the naturalist, and the phenomenological philosopher. This paper proposes a comparison between two main ways of conceiving the role and scope of that fundamental part of philosophy (or of "first" philosophy) which is traditionally called "ontology". One way, originated within the analytic tradition, consists of two main streams, namely philosophy of language and (contemporary) philosophy of mind, the former yielding "reduced ontology" and the latter "neo-Aristotelian ontology". The other way of conceiving ontology is exemplified by "phenomenological ontology" (more precisely, the Husserlian, not the Heideggerian version). Ontology as a theory of reference ("reduced" ontology, or ontology as depending on semantics) is presented and justified on the basis of some classical thesis of traditional philosophy of language (from Frege to Quine). "Reduced ontology" is shown to be identifiable with one level of a traditional, Aristotelian ontology, namely the one which corresponds to one of the four "senses of being" listed in Aristotle's Metaphysics: "being" as "being true". This identification is justified on the basis of Franz Brentano's "rules for translation" of the Aristotelian table of judgements in terms of (positive and negative) existential judgments such as are easily translatable into sentences of first order predicate logic. The second part of the paper is concerned with "neo-Aristotelian ontology", i.e. with naturalism and physicalism as the main ontological options underlying most of contemporary discussion in the philosophy of mind. The qualification of such options as "neo-Aristotelian" is justified; the relationships between "neo-Aristotelian ontology" and "reduced ontology" are discussed. In the third part the fundamental tenet of "phenomenological ontology" is identified by the thesis that a logical theory of existence and being does capture a sense of "existing" and "being" which, even though not the basic one, is grounded in the basic one. An attempt is done of further clarifying this "more basic" sense of "being". An argument making use of this supposedly "more basic" sense is advanced in favour of a "phenomenological ontology". ● Kuno Lorenz, Analytic Roots in Dialogic Constructivism. Both in the Vienna Circle ad in Russell's early philosophy the division of knowledge into two kinds (or two levels), perceptual and conceptual, plays a vital role. Constructivism in philosophy, in trying to provide a pragmatic foundation - a knowing-how - to perceptual as well as conceptual competences, discovered that this is dependent on semiotic tools. Therefore, the "principle of method" had to be amended by the "principle of dialogue". Analytic philosophy being an heir of classical empiricism, conceptually grasping the "given", and constructive philosophy being an heir of classical rationalism, perceptually providing the "constructed", merge into dialogical constructivism, a contemporary development of ideas derived especially from the works of Charles S. Peirce (his pragmatic maxim as a means of giving meaning to signs) and of Ludwig Wittgenstein (his language games as tools of comparison for understanding ways of life). 7. Albrecht Wellmer, "Autonomy of meaning" and "principle of charity" from the viewpoint of the pragmatics of language. In this essay I present an interpretation of the principle of the autonomy of meaning and of the principle of charity, the two main principles of Davidson's semantic view of truth, showing how both principles may fit in a perspective dictated by the pragmatics of language. I argue that (I) the principle of the autonomy of meaning may be thoroughly reformulated in terms of the pragmatics of language, (ii) the principle of charity needs a supplement in terms of pragmatics of language in order to become really enlightening as a principle of interpretation. Besides, I argue that: (i) on the one hand, the fundamental thesis of Habermas on the pragmatic theory of meaning ("we understand a speech act when we know what makes it admissible") is correlated with the seemingly intentionalist thesis according to which we understand a speech act when we know what a speaker means; (ii) on the other hand, to say that the meaning competence of a competent speaker is basically a competence about a potential of reasons (or also of possible justifications) which is inherently connected with the meaning of statements, or with their use in utterances. ● Rüdiger Bubner, The convergence of analytic and hermeneutic philosophy This paper argues that the analytic philosophy does not exist, at least as understood by its original programs. Differences in the analytic camp have always been bigger than they were believed to be. Now these differences are coming to the fore thanks to a process of dissolution of dogmatism. Philosophical analysis is led by its own inner logic towards questions that may be fairly qualified as hermeneutic. Recent developments in analytic philosophy, e.g. Davidson, seem to indicate a growing convergence of themes between philosophical analysis and hermeneutics; thus, the familiar opposition of Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy might soon belong to history. The fact of an ongoing appropriation of analytical techniques by present-day German philosophers may provide a basis for a powerful argument for the unity of philosophizing, beyond its strained images privileging one technique of thinking and rejecting the remainder. Actual philosophical practice should take the dialogue between the two camps more seriously; in fact, the processes described so far are no danger to philosophical work. They may be a danger for parochial approaches to philosophizing; indeed, contrary to what happens in the natural sciences, Thomas Kuhn's "normal science" developing within the framework of one fixed paradigm is not typical for philosophical thinking. And in philosophy innovating revolutions are symptoms more of vitality than of crisis. ● Karl-Otto Apel, The impact of analytic philosophy on my intellectual biography. In my paper I try to reconstruct the history of my Auseinandersetzung mit - as I called it - "language-analytical" philosophy (including even Peircean semiotics) since the late Fifties. The heuristics of my study was predetermined by two main motives of my beginnings: the hermeneutic turn of phenomenology and the transformation of "transcendental philosophy" in the light of the "language a priori". Thus, I took issue with the early and the later Wittgenstein, logical positivism, and post-Wittgensteinian and post-empiricist philosophy of science (i.e. G.H. von Wright and the renewal of the "explanation vs understanding controversy" as well as the debate between Th. Kuhn and Popper/Lakatos); besides, with speech act theory and the debate about "transcendental arguments" since Strawson. The "pragmatic turn", started already by C.L. Morris and the later Carnap, led me to study also the relationship between Wittgensteinian "use" theory of meaning and of truth. This resulted on my side in something like a program of "transcendental semiotics", i.e. "transcendental pragmatics" and "transcendental hermeneutics". ● Ben-Ami Scharfstein, A doubt on both their houses: the blindness to non-western philosophies. The burden of my criticism is that contemporary European philosophers of all kinds have continued to think as if there were no true philosophy but that of the West. For the most part, the existentialists have been oblivious of their Eastern congeners; the hermeneuticians have yet to stretch their horizons beyond the most familiar ones; and the analysts remain unaware of the analyses and linguistic sensitivities of the ancient non-European philosophers. Briefly, ignorance still blinds almost all contemporary Western philosophers to the rich, variegated philosophical traditions outside of their familiar orbit. Both Continental and Anglo-Americans have lost the breadth of view that once characterized such thinkers as Herder and the Humboldts. The blindness that has resulted is not simply that of individual Western philosophers but of our whole, still parochial philosophical culture. (shrink)

The philosophy of science has traditionally assumed that knowledge should be organized in the form of theories. From theories propositions can be deduced that can be tested in experiments. Most propositions deduced from theories take the form of if-then statements. For example, if variable A increases, what happens to variable B, assuming that all other variables are held constant? However, an alternative way of organizing knowledge, in the form of producer-product relationships, was proposed by the philosopher E.A. Singer, Jr. and (...) advocated by two of his students, C. West Churchman and Russell L. Ackoff. Whether to structure knowledge in the form of theories or methods is related to the question of whether there is a fundamental difference between the natural and the social sciences. As opposed to Karl Popper’s doctrine of the unity of method, this paper argues that structuring knowledge in the form of methods is appropriate in applied fields, particularly in management where a large part of the task is to achieve agreement among a group of knowing subjects on an appropriate set of actions. (shrink)

The philosophy of science has traditionally assumed that knowledge should be organized in the form of theories. From theories propositions can be deduced that can be tested in experiments. Most propositions deduced from theories take the form of if-then statements. For example, if variable A increases, what happens to variable B, assuming that all other variables are held constant? However, an alternative way of organizing knowledge, in the form of producer-product relationships, was proposed by the philosopher E.A. Singer, Jr. and (...) advocated by two of his students, C. West Churchman and Russell L. Ackoff. Whether to structure knowledge in the form of theories or methods is related to the question of whether there is a fundamental difference between the natural and the social sciences. As opposed to Karl Popper’s doctrine of the unity of method, this paper argues that structuring knowledge in the form of methods is appropriate in applied fields, particularly in management where a large part of the task is to achieve agreement among a group of knowing subjects on an appropriate set of actions. (shrink)

Ted Honderich's edited volume, with introductions to his chosen philosophers shows his contempt/ignorance of the non-white world's thinkers. Further, this review points out the iterative nature of Western philosophy today. The book under review is banal and shows the pathetic state of philosophising in the West now in 2020.

Розкрито сутність поняття «рейтинг». Доведено значущість рейтингової оцінки для суб’єктів фінансового ринку, зокрема для страхових компаній, потенційних страхувальників, інвесторів та кредиторів.

Авторами розглянуто вплив провідних світових кредитних рейтингових агентств на фінансову безпеку емітентів цінних паперів. Обґрунтовано перформативний характер діяльності кредитних рейтингових агентств з позицій моделі «Les economies de la grandeur» нового соціологічного французького інституціоналізму, що дає змогу розв’язати протиріччя щодо сильної опозиції стосовно їх функціонування з одночасним збереженням діючої системи нормативного використання кредитних рейтингів.

Авторами рассмотрены основные подходы к моделированию процесса принятия финансово-экономических решений в контексте учета поведенческого фактора соблюдения принятых социальных норм, что позволяет выйти за рамки классического представления о мотивации экономических агентов.

The stronger the level of economic integration between countries, the greater the need to study the formation patterns of the stock market reaction to the financial information signals. This concerns the Ukrainian stock market, which is now in its infancy, and which reaction to financial information signals is sometimes ambiguous. The research aims to identify the formation patterns of return and volatility indicators of the Ukrainian stock market reaction to the US financial information signals. To assess the direct nature of (...) US financial information signals effect on the PFTS stock index, the GARCH econometric modeling toolkit was applied. The research information base is the PFTS stock index and the Federal Reserve System financial information signals at the discount rate for 2000–2019. The fetch is divided into intervals corresponded to the ascent and decline phases of the financial cycle. It was found that an unforeseen increase in the discount rate at the financial cycle decline phase by 25 basis points decreases the PFTS stock index return, on average by 2.9%. Besides, the hypothesis about the general change stabilizing effect in the discount rate on the Ukrainian stock market volatility at the financial cycle growth phase was confirmed. Nevertheless, for investors, the most essential is the regulator’s monetary signals in the discount rate at the financial cycle decline phases rather than at the ascent phases because there is a more significant increase in the volatility level. (shrink)

Авторами рассмотрены основные подходы к моделированию процесса принятия финансово- экономических решений в контексте учета поведенческого фактора соблюдения принятых со- циальных норм, что позволяет выйти за рамки классического представления о мотивации экономических агентов. Ключевые слова: социальная норма, моральные эмоции, экономико-математическое моделирование, процесс принятия решений, «теория игр».

The Ukrainian PFTS stock index volatility reaction as a whole and its constituent economic sectors (“Basic Materials”, “Financials”, “Industrials”, “Oil & Gas”, “Telecommunications”, “Utilities”) to seven non-monetary US information signals (“Consumer price index”, “Personal spending”, “Unemployment rate”, “Gross domestic product”, “Industrial production”, “Consumer confidence”, “Housing starts”) was carried out for the period 2000–2017 on the basis of closing stock quotations in the trading day format. To assess the “surprise” component direct influence nature of the USA selected non-monetary information signals on (...) the PFTS stock index, an AR-GARCH econometric modelling device was used. The results achieved clearly indicate the presence of some PFTS stock index economic sectors heterogeneous reaction to the United States individual non-monetary information signals announcement. For example, such economic sectors as “Basic Materials”, “Financials”, and “Oil & Gas” volatility response to the US non-monetary information signal “Consumer price index” “surprise” components the opposite of the overall PFTS stock index reaction. It can also be concluded that the United States non-monetary information signals influence on the Ukrainian stock market volatility depends not only on the financial cycle phase and data frequency, but also on the PFTS stock index economic sector. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of (...) moral responsibility responsibility (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (shrink)

Розглянуто природу взаємозв'язку між неправдою та легітимністю в організаційному контексті при здійсненні підприємницької діяльності. Визначено роль, яку відіграє легітимність у конкурентоспроможності суб'єктів підприємництва (особливо новостворених) на ринку, а також представлені стратегії реагування на її дефіцит. Обґрунтовано, що незважаючи на несумісність з фундаментальними основами легітимності, неправда здатна виступати для підприємницьких структур інструментом створення деякої подоби організаційної легітимності, що в свою чергу часто дає змогу заручитися підтримкою зацікавлених осіб (зокрема, інвесторів) та відкрити доступ до необхідних для розвитку бізнесу можливостей і ресурсів.

Stephen Jay Gould argued that replaying the ‘tape of life’ would result in radically different evolutionary outcomes. Recently, biologists and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the theoretical importance of convergent evolution—the independent origination of similar biological forms and functions—which many interpret as evidence against Gould’s thesis. In this paper, we examine the evidentiary relevance of convergent evolution for the radical contingency debate. We show that under the right conditions, episodes of convergent evolution can constitute valid natural experiments (...) that support inferences regarding the deep counterfactual stability of macroevolutionary outcomes. However, we argue that proponents of convergence have problematically lumped causally heterogeneous phenomena into a single evidentiary basket, in effect treating all convergent events as if they are of equivalent theoretical import. As a result, the ‘critique from convergent evolution’ fails to engage with key claims of the radical contingency thesis. To remedy this, we develop ways to break down the heterogeneous set of convergent events based on the nature of the generalizations they support. Adopting this more nuanced approach to convergent evolution allows us to differentiate iterated evolutionary outcomes that are probably common among alternative evolutionary histories and subject to law-like generalizations, from those that do little to undermine and may even support, the Gouldian view of life. (shrink)

The study aims at determining the role and significance of such moral emotions as nobility, gratitude, admiration for the socially significant behavior of a person in society. That involves identifying a close relationship between those emotions and personality’s social behavior and that they can be one of the main incentives for socially significant behavior – theoretical basis. The importance of ethical emotions with positive valence when making decisions with their implementation in society determines the research’s theoretical and methodological basis. Those (...) are studied in the cognitive dimension of human social activity, considering their subjective experience and objectification. The authors determined that ethical emotions with positive valence, pleasant emotions stimulate a person to experience them again and behave socially desirable as such behavior allows reliving those emotions and self-actualizing. Emotions with a positive valence are most desirable for a person and are the essential behavior incentives in society. A person can act actively to achieve them, to experience them repeatedly, which is the basis of motivation for socially desirable and meaningful behavior. From exclusively subjective experiences, those emotions move into objectification, i.e., those motivated to act in conditions of a definite or indefinite social continuum. In due time, these socially crucial actions acquire normative content, sometimes even a form, since they serve as a model for others. Moral emotions with positive valence, empathy, rule-making, high culture, and responsibility to oneself and others form a good way of a person’s self-realization through positive social behavior. Furthermore, moral emotions with positive valence are the most important incentive for such behavior. (shrink)

There are few who would deny that P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962) ranks among the most significant contributions to modern moral philosophy. Although any number of essays have been devoted to it, Pamela Hieronymi’s 'Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals' is the first book-length study. The aim of Hieronymi’s study is to show that Strawson’s “central argument” has been “underestimated and misunderstood.” Hieronymi interprets this argument in terms of what she describes as Strawson’s “social naturalism”. Understood this (...) way, Hieronymi maintains, “the argument is powerful”. In what follows I argue that while Hieronymi’s discussion is stimulating and provides valuable insights into “Freedom and Resentment,” neither the interpretation advanced nor the social naturalist position that it describes is convincing. (shrink)

Розглянуто теоретико-методологічні основи прогнозування валютних курсів на ринку Forex. Визначено особливості діяльності на ринку Forex та його переваги і недоліки серед інших валютних ринків. Розкрито сутність прогнозування в цілому та основні проблеми у прогнозуванні. Розглянуто основні методи прогнозування валютних курсів на ринку Forex та ступінь їх використання.

People with the kind of preferences that give rise to the St. Petersburg paradox are problematic---but not because there is anything wrong with infinite utilities. Rather, such people cannot assign the St. Petersburg gamble any value that any kind of outcome could possibly have. Their preferences also violate an infinitary generalization of Savage's Sure Thing Principle, which we call the *Countable Sure Thing Principle*, as well as an infinitary generalization of von Neumann and Morgenstern's Independence axiom, which we call *Countable (...) Independence*. In violating these principles, they display foibles like those of people who deviate from standard expected utility theory in more mundane cases: they choose dominated strategies, pay to avoid information, and reject expert advice. We precisely characterize the preference relations that satisfy Countable Independence in several equivalent ways: a structural constraint on preferences, a representation theorem, and the principle we began with, that every prospect has a value that some outcome could have. (shrink)

Цель. Работа посвящена определению характерных особенностей влияния экономических информационных сигналов США посредством каналов трансмиссии на компоненты декомпозиции избыточной доходности украинского рынка акций (на примере репрезентативного фондового индекса ПФТС). Методика. Для выявления параметров изменений избыточной доходности биржевого рынка акций Украины в реакциях на экономические информационные сигналы было применено векторное авторегрессионное моделирование. Выбор модели VAR (3) был обоснован согласно информационным критериям AIC и SIC. Результаты. В работе установлено, что лишь переменная избыточной доходности (с лагом 3) позволяет прогнозировать определенную долю будущих изменений доходности (...) фондового индекса ПФТС. Тем не менее, коэффициент R² показывает, что задействованные переменные могут объяснить лишь около 7% изменения избыточной доходности фондового индекса ПФТС, что подтверждает достаточно низкую прогнозируемость украинского рынка акций. На основе декомпозиции избыточной доходности фондового индекса ПФТС за период 2000-2017 гг. (формат торгового дня) было выявлено, что рынок акций Украины является чувствительным к информационным сигналам по будущей избыточной доходности, поскольку более 89% от общего ее изменения можно объяснить влиянием непосредственно через канал премии за риск. Также установлено наличие влияния макроэкономического информационного сигнала США «Индекс доверия потребителей» на избыточную доходность украинского фондового индекса ПФТС через канал премии за риск, что подтверждает предположение о том, что «эффект неожиданности» макроэкономических сигналов США может быть фактором риска для рынка акций Украины. Научная новизна. Получил свое развитие методический подход по определению параметров реакции компонент избыточной доходности фондового индекса ПФТС на «эффект неожиданности» информационного содержание макроэкономических сигналов США. Практическая значимость. Использование приведенного методического подхода позволит улучшить точность финансового прогнозирования параметров реакции ценовых котировок отечественного рынка акций на обнародование макроэкономических информационных сигналов США, что даст возможность инвесторам (частным и институциональным) повысить доходность собственных инвестиционных стратегий. (shrink)

The Limits of Free Will presents influential articles by Paul Russell concerning free will and moral responsibility. The problems arising in this field of philosophy, which are deeply rooted in the history of the subject, are also intimately related to a wide range of other fields, such as law and criminology, moral psychology, theology, and, more recently, neuroscience. These articles were written and published over a period of three decades, although most have appeared in the past decade. Among the (...) topics covered: the challenge of skepticism; moral sentiment and moral capacity; necessity and the metaphysics of causation; practical reason; free will and art; fatalism and the limits of agency; moral luck, and our metaphysical attitudes of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

How should a group with different opinions (but the same values) make decisions? In a Bayesian setting, the natural question is how to aggregate credences: how to use a single credence function to naturally represent a collection of different credence functions. An extension of the standard Dutch-book arguments that apply to individual decision-makers recommends that group credences should be updated by conditionalization. This imposes a constraint on what aggregation rules can be like. Taking conditionalization as a basic constraint, we gather (...) lessons from the established work on credence aggregation, and extend this work with two new impossibility results. We then explore contrasting features of two kinds of rules that satisfy the constraints we articulate: one kind uses fixed prior credences, and the other uses geometric averaging, as opposed to arithmetic averaging. We also prove a new characterisation result for geometric averaging. Finally we consider applications to neighboring philosophical issues, including the epistemology of disagreement. (shrink)

Авторами рассмотрены основные подходы к моделированию процесса принятия финансово- экономических решений в контексте учета поведенческого фактора соблюдения принятых социальных норм, что позволяет выйти за рамки классического представления о мотивации экономических агентов. Ключевые слова: социальная норма, моральные эмоции, экономико-математическое моделирование, процесс принятия решений, «теория игр».

Should we make significant sacrifices to ever-so-slightly lower the chance of extremely bad outcomes, or to ever-so-slightly raise the chance of extremely good outcomes? *Fanaticism* says yes: for every bad outcome, there is a tiny chance of extreme disaster that is even worse, and for every good outcome, there is a tiny chance of an enormous good that is even better. I consider two related recent arguments for Fanaticism: Beckstead and Thomas's argument from *strange dependence on space and time*, and (...) Wilkinson's *Indology* argument. While both arguments are instructive, neither is persuasive. In fact, the general principles that underwrite the arguments (a *separability* principle in the first case, and a *reflection* principle in the second) are *inconsistent* with Fanaticism. In both cases, though, it is possible to rehabilitate arguments for Fanaticism based on restricted versions of those principles. The situation is unstable: plausible general principles tell *against* Fanaticism, but restrictions of those same principles (with strengthened auxiliary assumptions) *support* Fanaticism. All of the consistent views that emerge are very strange. (shrink)

В статье рассмотрена деятельность ведущих кредитных рейтинговых агентств (Fitch Ratings, Moody's Investors Service и Standard & Poor's) в контексте снижения информационной ценности кредитных рейтингов, которые они присваивают, и сохранения доминирующих позиций на рынке финансового рейтингования. Целью исследования является рассмотрение деятельности кредитных рейтинговых агентств в измерении социального конструкционизма в процессе осуществления государственной финансовой политики, объясняя сопротивление регулятивной модели их деятельности многочисленным вызовам и переменам. Подход новой институциональной социологии в управлении мы сделали чувствительным к проблематике институциональных изменений во времени. Таким образом, мы (...) высказались за трактовку вопроса о неизменности организации деятельности КРА в соответствии с условиями нового социологического институционализма. То есть, дается приоритет когнитивной основе институтов, служащей поддержкой конкретного проявления социального порядка и дающей отличный способ для его понимания. (shrink)

What is the difference between knowing someone and acknowledging them? Is it possible to want to be acknowledged while remaining unknown? And if one’s desire to know another person is too consuming, can this foreclose the possibility of acknowledgment? Cavell argues that we sometimes avoid the ethical problem of acknowledgment by (mis)conceiving our relations with others in terms of knowledge and that this epistemic misconception can actually amount to a form of ethical harm. I show that Polanski’s Chinatown helps us (...) understand the difference between knowing and acknowledging and that Cavell’s concepts help us better appreciate Chinatown. (shrink)

Відсутність точної відповіді на питання щодо появи тих або інших соціально-етичних норм може частково пояснити чому моделі соціальних переваг часто розглядаються як ad hoc (в тому сенсі, що висновки, які отримуються в рамках таких моделей, безпосередньо ґрунтуються на висунутих в таких моделях особливих припущеннях), а формалізація моделювання процесів економічної поведінки часто співвідноситься з існуванням певної норми економічної поведінки в контексті досягнення рівноважного стану.

Визначено специфіку постмодерністського споживача продуктів культури у процесі досвіду споживання та можливостей для бізнесу. Встановлено, що постмодерністського споживача доцільно розглядати як вільну особистість із фрагментованою ідентичністю, яка створює цінність та отримує досвід, а також здатна залучати ресурси та навички для конкретних ситуацій споживання продуктів культури. Обґрунтовано важливість застосування концепції пережитого досвіду, щоб підкреслити ключову роль споживача у спільному із суб’єктом підприємництва формуванні цінності будь-якого досвіду споживання продуктів культури. Обґрунтовано, що досвід споживання має місце не лише до, під час і після (...) споживання продукту культури, але також може розглядатися в контексті великої кількості мікродослідів, що поєднують спільне та/або послідовне використання віртуальних та реальних пристроїв. (shrink)

The need for innovative development of healthcare institutions is determined by the necessity to increase the efficiency of organizational processes based on the formation of new models of cooperation, which will make it possible to get access to new technologies and knowledge. The goal of the study is to determine the parameters of the impact of innovative open cooperation strategy and the strategy of innovative closed cooperation of healthcare institutions on the effectiveness of their organizational structure in the context of (...) dissemination and the use of knowledge. Simulation modeling was applied to generate the most effective organizational management structure in the context of innovative cooperation and knowledge exchange within the organizational processes “Inside-out” and “Inside-in”. It is substantiated that the strategies of innovative cooperation “Open Innovation/Closed Innovation” have a significant impact on the organizational structure of management of healthcare institutions in terms of the “degree of centralization” (Dci), “degree of mediation” (Dii), and “degree of centralization of powers” (Dpi). The values of the selected criteria range from 25,52% to 61,50% in the case of Dii, and from 34,53% to 52,63% in the case of Dci, which indicates a higher efficiency of organizational knowledge exchange processes in healthcare institutions, which adhere to the Open Innovation strategy of innovative cooperation. Therefore, there are significant differences in the effectiveness of the management’s organizational structure depending on the degree of openness of innovative cooperation of healthcare institutions. The strategy of innovative openness allows increasing the number and quality of connections in the context of knowledge exchange between the subjects (actors, agents) of the organizational structure (in a broad sense, considering internal and external levels of externality) of healthcare institutions, regardless of the distance between them and the level of similarity. (shrink)

I examine three ‘anti-object’ metaphysical views: nihilism, generalism, and anti-quantificationalism. After setting aside nihilism, I argue that generalists should be anti-quantificationalists. Along the way, I attempt to articulate what a ‘metaphysically perspicuous’ language might even be.

What might film’s contribution be to the work of acknowledgment, apology, and moral repair? James Baldwin's 1976 book on film, The Devil Finds Work, can be read as a reflection on the role that film might play in the extensive, multi-dimensional, public task of, as he puts it, putting ourselves in touch with reality, specifically the reality of American racism as an integral to American reality, its past and present. Developing Baldwin's thought, this paper outlines two broad types of cinematic (...) pictures or conceptions of racism: (1) films can present racism as a special event, or (2) films can present racism as a pervasive, structural reality. The former is complicit in a racist ideology that pictures racism as exceptional, rare, and unusual; the latter functions to critique such an ideology by picturing racism, not as a departure from the norm, but as constitutive of it. I develop a formal account of these cinematic pictures or conceptions through close analysis of two films made three years apart: Norman Jewison’s 1967 In the Heat of the Night (which Baldwin also analyses) and Michael Roemer’s 1964 film Nothing But a Man. (shrink)

We prove a representation theorem for preference relations over countably infinite lotteries that satisfy a generalized form of the Independence axiom, without assuming Continuity. The representing space consists of lexicographically ordered transfinite sequences of bounded real numbers. This result is generalized to preference orders on abstract superconvex spaces.

Enactivists frequently argue their account heralds a revolution in cognitive science: enactivism will unseat cognitivism as the dominant paradigm. We examine the lines of reasoning enactivists employ in stirring revolt, but show that none of these prove compelling reasons for cognitivism to be replaced by enactivism. First, we examine the hard sell of enactivism: enactivism reveals a critical explanatory gap at the heart of cognitivism. We show that enactivism does not meet the requirements to incite a paradigm shift in the (...) Kuhnian sense—there is no internal crisis in cognitivism. Nor does it provide inherently better explanations of cognition as some have claimed. Second, we consider the soft sell of enactivism: enactivism provides a more attractive, parsimonious, or clear-eyed lens on cognition. This move proves to boil down to a misunderstanding of how theories are selected in science. Instead we lend support to a broader and more desirable way to conceive of enactivism, the recent proposal that enactivism is a philosophy of nature. We explain how a philosophy of nature does more than support a single research paradigm by integrating scientific questions into a cohesive picture. (shrink)

There is a debate in the literature as to whether Kantian self-conceit is intrapsychic or interpersonal. I argue that self-conceit is both. I argue that, for Kant, self-conceit is fundamentally an illusion about authority, one’s own and any authority one stands in relation to. Self-conceit refuses to recognize the authority of the law. But the law “shows up” for us in two guises: one’s own reason and other persons. Thus, self-conceit refuses to recognize both guises of the law. Hence self-conceit (...) is essentially double-sided, at once intrapsychic and interpersonal. (shrink)

The immediate aim of this paper is to articulate the essential features of an alternative compatibilist position, one that is responsive to sources of resistance to the compatibilist program based on considerations of fate and luck. The approach taken relies on distinguishing carefully between issues of skepticism and pessimism as they arise in this context. A compatibilism that is properly responsive to concerns about fate and luck is committed to what I describe as free will pessimism, which is to be (...) distinguished from free will skepticism. Free will skepticism is the view that our vulnerability to conditions of fate and luck serve to discredit our view of ourselves as free and responsible agents. Free will pessimism rejects free will scepticism, since the basis of its pessimism rests with the assumption that we are free and responsible agents who are, nevertheless, subject to fate and luck in this aspect of our lives. According to free will pessimism, all the major parties and positions in the free will debate, including that of skepticism, are modes of evasion and distortion regarding our human predicament in respect of agency and moral life. (shrink)

“There are no gaps in logical space,” David Lewis writes, giving voice to sentiment shared by many philosophers. But different natural ways of trying to make this sentiment precise turn out to conflict with one another. One is a *pattern* idea: “Any pattern of instantiation is metaphysically possible.” Another is a *cut and paste* idea: “For any objects in any worlds, there exists a world that contains any number of duplicates of all of those objects.” We use resources from model (...) theory to show the inconsistency of certain packages of combinatorial principles and the consistency of others. (shrink)

The Epistemic Objection says that certain theories of time imply that it is impossible to know which time is absolutely present. Standard presentations of the Epistemic Objection are elliptical—and some of the most natural premises one might fill in to complete the argument end up leading to radical skepticism. But there is a way of filling in the details which avoids this problem, using epistemic safety. The new version has two interesting upshots. First, while Ross Cameron alleges that the Epistemic (...) Objection applies to presentism as much as to theories like the growing block, the safety version does not overgeneralize this way. Second, the Epistemic Objection does generalize in a different, overlooked way. The safety objection is a serious problem for a widely held combination of views: “propositional temporalism” together with “metaphysical eternalism”. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is widely recognized as belonging among the greatest and most influential moral philosophers of the twentieth-century – and arguably the greatest British moral philosopher of the late twentieth-century. His various contributions over a period of nearly half a century changed the course of the subject and challenged many of its deepest assumptions and prejudices. There are, nevertheless, a number of respects in which the interpretation of his work is neither easy nor straightforward. One reason for this is that (...) both his views and his methods evolved and shifted in significant ways, especially around the time that he wrote and published Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (i.e. the early 1980s). One way of gauging and assessing these changes in Williams’ views and outlook is to consider his relationship and attitude to other philosophers during this period. Of particular interest is his changing attitude to the moral philosophy of David Hume. This relationship is of considerable importance, not only because it serves as a useful tool for the interpretation of Williams’ views but also because it provides us with some critical insight into the respective strengths and weaknesses of both Hume’s and Williams’ contributions. -/- . (shrink)

Mechanistic explanations are often said to explain because they reveal the causal structure of the world. Conversely, dynamical models supposedly lack explanatory power because they do not describe causal structure. The only way for dynamical models to produce causal explanations is via the 3M criterion: the model must be mapped onto a mechanism. This framing of the situation has become the received view around the viability of dynamical explanation. In this paper, I argue against this position and show that dynamical (...) models can themselves reveal causal structure and consequently produce nonmechanistic, dynamical explanations. Taking the example of cell fates from systems biology, I show how dynamical models, and specifically the attractor landscapes they describe, identify the causes of cell differentiation and explain why cells select particular fates. These dynamical features of the system better fit Woodward’s (2010, 2018) criteria of specificity and proportionality and make them the best candidate causes of cell fates than mechanisms. I also show how these causes are irreducible and inaccessible to mechanistic models, making 3M unworkable and counterproductive in this case. Dynamical models can reveal dynamical causes and thereby provide causal explanations. (shrink)

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well our life goes for us is solely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of our desires. Several writers have argued that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the harms of self-sacrifice and severe depression. In this paper, I argue that desire theories of well-being can account for the harm of both phenomena by rejecting proportionalism about desire and motivation. This is the view that desires always motivate proportionally to their (...) strength. If we reject this view, then we can explain the harm of many cases of self-sacrifice as arising when we act upon our weaker desires and thereby frustrate our stronger desires. Moreover, the harm of many cases of severe depression can be explained by its suppression of the motivational force of desires. This inevitably frustrates desires that we are left unmotivated to fulfil. I argue that this approach captures the experiential quality of self-sacrifice and severe depression better than rival views that seek to problematise these phenomena for desire theories of well-being. Moreover, these theories have sufficient conceptual resources to account for residual cases of self-sacrifice and severe depression that are less well explained by this approach. (shrink)

Some hold that the lesson of Russell’s paradox and its relatives is that mathematical reality does not form a ‘definite totality’ but rather is ‘indefinitely extensible’. There can always be more sets than there ever are. I argue that certain contact puzzles are analogous to Russell’s paradox this way: they similarly motivate a vision of physical reality as iteratively generated. In this picture, the divisions of the continuum into smaller parts are ‘potential’ rather than ‘actual’. Besides the intrinsic (...) interest of this metaphysical picture, it has important consequences for the debate over absolute generality. It is often thought that ‘indefinite extensibility’ arguments at best make trouble for mathematical platonists; but the contact arguments show that nominalists face the same kind of difficulty, if they recognize even the metaphysical possibility of the picture I sketch. (shrink)

The existence of mereological sums can be derived from an abstraction principle in a way analogous to numbers. I draw lessons for the thesis that “composition is innocent” from neo-Fregeanism in the philosophy of mathematics.

I examine what the mathematical theory of random structures can teach us about the probability of Plenitude, a thesis closely related to David Lewis's modal realism. Given some natural assumptions, Plenitude is reasonably probable a priori, but in principle it can be (and plausibly it has been) empirically disconfirmed—not by any general qualitative evidence, but rather by our de re evidence.

I begin by distinguishing four different versions of the argument from evil that start from four different moral premises that in various ways link the existence of God to the absence of suffering. The version of the argument from evil that I defend starts from the premise that if God exists, he would not allow excessive, unnecessary suffering. The argument continues by denying the consequent of this conditional to conclude that God does not exist. I defend the argument against Skeptical (...) Theists who say we are in no position to judge that there is excessive, unnecessary suffering by arguing that this defense has absurd consequences. It allows Young Earthers to construct a parallel argument that concludes that we are in no position to judge that God did not create the earth recently. In the last section I consider whether theists can turn the argument from evil on its head by arguing that God exists. I first criticize Alvin Plantinga’s theory of warrant that one might try to use to argue for God’s existence. I then criticize Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian argument to the same conclusion. I conclude that my version of the argument from evil is a strong argument against the existence of God and that several important responses to it do not defeat it. (shrink)

In "Freedom and Resentment" P.F. Strawson, famously, advances a strong form of naturalism that aims to discredit kcepticism about moral responsibility by way of approaching these issues through an account of our reactive attitudes. However, even those who follow Strawson's general strategy on this subject accept that his strong naturalist program needs to be substantially modified, if not rejected. One of the most influential and important efforts to revise and reconstruct the Strawsonian program along these lines has been provided by (...) R. Jay Wallace, who presents a "narrower" construal of our reactive attitudes in his own account of what is involved in holding an agent responsible. In this paper I argue that Wallace's narrow construal of responsibility comes at too high a cost and that naturalists of a broadly Strawsonian cast should reject it. Related to this point, I argue that Wallace's narrow conception of responsibility is a product of his effort to construct his account within the confines of "the morality system" (i.e. as described by Bernard Williams) and that this way of construing responsibility leads into series of unnecessary and misleading oppositions. A more plausible middle path, I maintain, can be found between Strawson's excessively strong naturalist program and Wallace's narrow and restrictive view of responsibility. (shrink)