Hájek (Erkenntnis 70(2):211–235, 2009) argues that probabilities cannot be the limits of relative frequencies in counterfactual infinite sequences. I argue for a different understanding of these limits, drawing on Norton’s (Philos Sci 79(2):207–232, 2012) distinction between approximations (inexact descriptions of a target) and idealizations (separate models that bear analogies to the target). Then, I adapt Hájek’s arguments to this new context. These arguments provide excellent reasons not to use hypothetical frequencies as idealizations, but no reason not to use them (...) as approximations. (shrink)

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of (...) class='Hi'>Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response. (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi (2013) presents some novel counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism (HS) for indicative conditionals. I show that they are not compelling as they neglect the complicated ways in which conditionals and modals interact. I then briefly outline why HS should nevertheless be rejected.

In this paper I argue against readings of Hertz that overly assimilate him into the thought of late 20th century anti-realists and pluralists. Firstly, as is well-known, various images of the same objects are possible according to Hertz. However, I will argue that this envisaged pluralism concerns the situation before all the evidence is considered i. e. before we can decide whether the images are correct and appropriate. Hertz believes in final and decisive battles of the kind he participated in (...) while doing experiments in electrodynamics. Secondly, I will argue that the concept of representation is still quite appropriately applied to important aspects of images, namely when it comes to fundamental physical equations. In this context Hertz explicitly allows that “characteristics of our image, which claim to represent observable relations of things, do really and correctly correspond to them” (Hertz [1894] 1956, 9). A final consideration is Hertz’s consistent appeal to the concept of the hypothesis. I will argue that his use of the concept does not indicate that he contributed to an increasing hypothetization of science, if this trend is understood in a strong sense, i. e. as the belief that the correctness of scientific theories cannot be established for principled reasons. As mentioned, when it comes to experimental evidence Hertz believes in decisive battles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this paper I argue (i) that the hypothetical arguments about which the Stoic Chrysippus wrote numerous books (DL 7.196) are not to be confused with the so-called hypothetical syllogisms" but are the same hypothetical arguments as those mentioned five times in Epictetus (e.g. Diss. 1.25.11-12); and (ii) that these hypothetical arguments are formed by replacing in a non-hypothetical argument one (or more) of the premisses by a Stoic "hypothesis" or supposition. Such "hypotheses" or (...) suppositions differ from propositions in that they have a specific logical form and no truth-value. The reason for the introduction of a distinct class of hypothetical arguments can be found in the context of dialectical argumentation. The paper concludes with the discussion of some evidence for the use of Stoic hypothetical arguments in ancient texts. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the historical context and systematic importance of Kant's hypothetical use of reason. It does so by investigating the role of hypotheses in Kant's philosophy of science. We first situate Kant’s account of hypotheses in the context of eighteenth-century German philosophy of science, focusing on the works of Wolff, Meier, and Crusius. We contrast different conceptions of hypotheses of these authors and elucidate the different theories of probability informing them. We then adopt a more systematic perspective to (...) discuss Kant's idea that scientific hypotheses must articulate real possibilities. We argue that Kant's views on the intelligibility of scientific hypotheses constitute a valuable perspective on scientific understanding and the constraints it imposes on scientific rationality. (shrink)

This article has provided a critical review of sampling procedures in the context of Sierra Leone. The basics of the two major types of sampling procedures (probability and non-probability) have been explained, with a view of shedding light on their usage to assist researchers in their pursuance of addressing proposed hypothetical statements. Problems associated with low literacy rate in Sierra Leone have been highlighted as a major concern, more so in the process of ensuring ethical code of conducts are (...) adhered to during the execution of sampling research. Research practices in the country needs a complete overhaul, particularly with its very low investment in ‘Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ to help support the backbone of research, and backed by investment in technology to assist with the enhancement of exploring sampling data in pursuit of addressing hypothetical postulates / research questions during research. (shrink)

This thesis is a sceptical investigation into the notion that the metaphorical wave-particle binary of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is related to quantum physics. Indeed, the field of literature and science has employed conceptual similarities as the main means of connecting quantum concepts to novels, however, this has led to a host of scholarly difficulties, prompting the need for a re-examination of analogical linkages. Woolf is the model candidate for such a re-examination, given her historical and philosophical proximity with (...) the developments of quantum mechanics. To the Lighthouse, in particular, was written between 1925 and 1927: precisely when quantum physicists were attempting to resolve the wave-particle duality, leading to Niels Bohr's complementarity. This parallel has been noted by researchers as relevant to the novel, as it too displays a general binary that can be read as wave-particle-like, which the author also attempts to resolve along similar philosophical lines. Nevertheless, other than proximity and similarity, there are no reasons to affirm that the science is related to the novel; hence, it is an ideal case study to examine in order to ascertain the value of conceptual similarities in literature and science. To do so, To the Lighthouse's binary and its resolution are interpreted in a thesis-long close reading, in order to compare aspects of it firstly to Woolf's personal thought, and secondly to various non-quantum intellectual contexts that preceded and surrounded her. In doing so, it becomes clear not only that invoking quantum physics serves no clear purpose in better understanding the novel, but also that the notion of resolving wave- particle-like binaries was a widespread philosophical procedure at the turn of the century, decades before Bohr's concept. This negative conclusion interrogates what the scholarly value of interpreting similarities is, though a hypothetical solution can be found in conceptual metaphor theory. (shrink)

At the present time there is a boom in the use of pharmacological cognitive enhancers (PCEs) particularly within an academic and labor context. Numerous objections to the use of this medicines arise in the context of Neuroethics, being one of the most important, the principle of justice. Among the most prevalent arguments put forward it is noted the disturbance of distributive justice and competitive fairness. -/- Succinctly it is established that hypothetical PCEs without adverse effects could promote the social (...) fragmentation by favoring economically dominant classes. However, it has been experimentally observed that PCEs present benefits ruled by the inverted U phenomenon, where cognitive benefits given by these medicines are not dose-dependent and have dependence on the baseline performance. Producing bigger benefits in individuals that initially had a worst performance. In this way the use of PCEs, assuming a context of open-access, could contribute to social equity and distributive justice. (shrink)

I argue for an analysis of ‘therefore’ as presupposition trigger against the more standard conventional implicature story originally put forward by Grice (1975). I propose that we model the relevant presupposition as “testing” the context in a way that is similar to how, according to some dynamic treatments of epistemic `must', ‘must’ tests the context. But whereas the presupposition analysis is plausible for ‘therefore’, ‘must’ is not plausibly a presupposition trigger. Moreover, whereas ‘must’ can naturally occur under a supposition, the (...) same is not true for ‘therefore’. In the light of these differences, I suggest we distinguish between different sorts of tests on the basis of the mechanisms whereby these expressions test the context (whether through a presupposition or through their core content) and on the basis of whether they can operate only on categorical contexts or on both categorical and hypothetical contexts. (shrink)

Development of the world economy bears numerous negative phenomena, and require constant need to rebalance socioeconomic interests of nations, transnational subjects, and individuals. Socialisation is an important and effective tool for balancing social and individual; however, despite socialisation is evolving rapidly, its scientific and practical potential is not duly uncovered. In the article theoretical and methodological foundations of socialisation of economy is surveyed in the context of globalisation, and etymology, explanations, scope, historical phases of development, theoretical aspects and practical forms (...) of use, consequences and prospects are analysed. The term «socialisation» was determined as a multidisciplinary, used in many scientific fields, increasingly involving various areas of research and is understood as inclusion, adaptation and development of human being in society. It was determined that the economy socialisation is implemented in different fields and semantic structures, contains a large number of methodological tools, is involved at all management levels, and is primarily identified with the increasing role of social component in the life of human resources. The assumptions were made about the future transformation of this category in line with the identified predictive trends. (shrink)

Hypothetical trolley problems are widely used to elicit moral intuitions, which are employed in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments. The scenarios used are outlandish, and some philosophers and psychologists have questioned whether the judgments made in such unrealistic and unfamiliar scenarios are a reliable basis for theory-building. We present two experiments that investigate whether differences in moral judgment due to the role of the agent, previously found in a standard trolley scenario, persist (...) when the structure of the problem is transplanted to a more familiar context. Our first experiment compares judgments in hypothetical scenarios; our second experiment operationalizes some of those scenarios in the laboratory, allowing us to observe judgments about decisions that are really being made. In the hypothetical experiment, we found that the role effect reversed in our more familiar context, both in judgments about what the actor ought to do and in judgments about the moral rightness of the action. However, in our laboratory experiment, the effects reversed back or disappeared. Among judgments of what the actor ought to do, we found the same role effect as in the standard hypothetical trolley scenario, but the effect of role on moral judgments disappeared. (shrink)

'It is widely agreed that contraposition, strengthening the antecedent and hypothetical syllogism fail for subjunctive conditionals', write Brogaard and Salerno in (2008: Counterfactuals and context, Analysis 68.1, 39–46). In that article they argue that the putative counterexamples to these principles are actually no threat, on the grounds that they involve a certain kind of illicit contextual shift. -/- Here I argue that this particular kind of contextual shift, if it is properly so called, is not generally illicit, and that (...) therefore the counterexamples shouldn't be blocked with the kind of blanket restriction Brogaard and Salerno advocate. The idea that the reasoning patterns in question can be vindicated given restrictions still seems promising; the purpose of this note is to show that the simple restriction proposed by Brogaard and Salerno isn't the right way of going. (shrink)

Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno (2008) have defended the validity of counterfactual hypothetical syllogism (CHS) within the Stalnaker-Lewis account. Whenever the premisses of an instance of CHS are non-vacuosly true, a shift in context has occurred. Hence the standard counterexamples to CHS suffer from context failure. Charles Cross (2011) rejects this argument as irreconcilable with the Stalnaker-Lewis account. I argue against Cross that the basic Stalnaker-Lewis truth condition may be supplemented in a way that makes (CHS) valid. Yet pace (...) Brogaard and Salerno, there are alternative ways of spelling out the basic truth condition which are standard in most debates; and given these ways, the counterexamples to CHS are successful. (shrink)

​Imagination will remain a mystery—we will not be able to explain imagination—until we can break it into parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the parts are other ordinary mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, according to which imagination is a sui generis mental state or process—one (...) with its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states—judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach. (shrink)

I respond to a hypothetical critique of sport, drawing on primarily post-modernist sources, that would view the high performance athlete in particular as a product of the application of technical disciplines of power and that opposes sport and play as fundamentally antithetical. Through extensive discussion of possible definitions of play, and of performance, I argue that although much of the critique is valid it confuses a method of sport for the whole of it. Play is indeed a noncompellable spontaneity, (...) but one that involves the improvisational transformation of the technical skills of a sport within the context of a dynamic situation. Technique is a condition of heightened play; it does not produce it. This also means that the best play is not undisciplined. Play and sport can exist apart, but both are better combined. (shrink)

The recent resurgence of extreme-right movements and the nationalist turn of many governments across the world have reignited the relevance of discussions within educational philosophy about the teaching of national identity in schools. However, the conceptualisation of national identity in previous iterations of these debates have been largely Western and Eurocentric, making the past theoretical literature about these questions less relevant for post-colonial settings. In this paper, I imagine a new approach for teaching national identity in post-colonial contexts, founded (...) on postcolonial conceptions of identity and in particular, the concept of hybridity. I first develop a postcolonial account of national identity by drawing on Homi Bhabha’s thinking about cultural identity, drawing on his concepts of liminality, splitting, and ambivalence. Then, building on Bhabha's notion of hybridity, I propose a distinction between national identity portrayals as either fixed or malleable. Finally, I demonstrate the implications of such a conceptual distinction on the way that national identity is taught in post-colonial schools; by way of an example, I envision a concrete approach to teaching national identity that views national identity as malleable rather than fixed, set in a hypothetical postcolonial school in the Philippines. By beginning from postcolonial assumptions about national identity, I hope to indicate new directions that the debates about the teaching of national identity in schools might proceed. (shrink)

Pronouns often convey information about a person’s social identity (e.g., gender). Consequently, pronouns have become a focal point in academic and public debates about whether pronouns should be changed to be more inclusive, such as for people whose identities do not fit current pronoun conventions (e.g., gender non-binary individuals). Here, we make an empirical contribution to these debates by investigating which social identities lay speakers think that pronouns should encode and why. Across four studies, participants were asked to evaluate different (...) types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns, and identity-neutral pronouns. We sampled participants from two languages with different pronoun systems: English (N = 1,120) and Turkish (N = 260). English pronouns commonly denote binary gender (e.g., he for men), whereas Turkish pronouns are identity-neutral (e.g., o for anyone). Participants’ reasoning about pronouns reflected both a familiarity preference (i.e., participants preferred the pronoun type used in their language) and—critically—participants’ social ideologies. In both language contexts, participants’ ideological beliefs that social groups are inherently distinct (essentialism) and should be hierarchal (social dominance orientation) predicted relatively greater endorsement of binary gender pronouns and race pronouns. A preregistered experimental study with an English-speaking sample showed that the relationship between ideology and pronoun endorsement is causal: Ideologies shape attitudes toward pronouns. Together, the present research contributes to linguistic and psychological theories concerning how people reason about language and informs policy-relevant questions about whether and how to implement language changes for social purposes. (shrink)

In, “The Turing Triage Test”, published in Ethics and Information Technology, I described a hypothetical scenario, modelled on the famous Turing Test for machine intelligence, which might serve as means of testing whether or not machines had achieved the moral standing of people. In this paper, I: (1) explain why the Turing Triage Test is of vital interest in the context of contemporary debates about the ethics of AI; (2) address some issues that complexify the application of this test; (...) and, (3) in doing so, defend a way of thinking about the question of the moral standing of intelligent machines, which takes the idea of “seriousness” seriously. This last objective is, in fact, my primary one and is motivated by the sense that, to date, much of the “philosophy” of AI has suffered from a profound failure to properly distinguish between things that we can say and things that we can really mean. (shrink)

Language theorists have recently come to have an increasing appreciation for the fact that context contributes heavily in determining our interpretation of what is said. Indeed, it now seems clear that no complete understanding of a natural language is possible without some account of the way in which context affects our interpretation of discourse. In this paper, I will attempt to explore one facet of the language – context relationship, namely, the relation between conditionals and context. The first part of (...) the paper develops an account of truth for conditionals which allows them to depend on momentary features of the context in which they are uttered. In the second half of the paper, comparisons with other recent theories of the conditional will be considered. Particular attention will be given to the problem of whether the conditional really violates classical inferences such as Hypothetical Syllogism and Contraposition as has often been claimed in recent years. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston claims that an artist’s intentions are successfully realized and hence determinate of the meaning of a work if and only if they are compatible and “mesh” with the linguistic and conventional meanings of the text or artefact taken in its target or intended context. I argue that this specific standard of success is not without its difficulties. First, I show how an artist’s intention can sometimes be constitutive of a work’s meaning even if there is no significant meshing (...) between the artist’s intention and his work. Second, I argue against the claim that the artist’s intentions need to be compatible with the linguistic and conventional meanings of a text. Third, I discuss a case that creates a particular puzzle for Livingston since the intentions of the artist concerned are clearly not successfully realized, though they are compatible and mesh with all the relevant data. I conclude my paper by suggesting a solution to this puzzle. (shrink)

I defend normative subjectivism against the charge that believing in it undermines the functional role of normative judgment. In particular, I defend it against the claim that believing that our reasons change from context to context is problematic for our use of normative judgments. To do so, I distinguish two senses of normative universality and normative reasons---evaluative universality and reasons and ontic universality and reasons. The former captures how even subjectivists can evaluate the actions of those subscribing to other conventions; (...) the latter explicates how their reasons differ from ours. I then show that four aspects of the functional role of normativity---evaluation of our and others actions and reasons, normative communication, hypothetical planning, and evaluating counternromative conditionals---at most requires our normative systems being evaluatively universal. Yet reasonable subjectivist positions need not deny evaluative universality. (shrink)

The passionate and staunch defence of logic of the controversial thinker Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd of Córdoba (384-456/994-1064), had lasting consequences in the Islamic world. Indeed, his book Facilitating the Understanding of the Rules of Logic and Introduction Thereto, with Common Expressions and Juristic Examples (Kitāb al-Taqrīb li-ḥadd al-manṭiq wa-l-mudkhal ilayhi bi-l-alfāẓ al-ʿāmmiyya wa-l-amthila al-fiqhiyya), composed in 1025-1029, was well known and discussed during and after his time; and it paved the way for the studies (...) of his compatriots Ibn Bājjah (d. 1138), Ibn Ṭufayl (1185), and Ibn Rushd (1198), who each gave demonstrative reasoning a privileged place within the methods of attaining knowledge. Unfortunately, as too often in the history of science, Ibn Ḥazm’s innovative perspectives and contributions in logic have been overlooked or considered with an attitude of contempt. On the one hand, his work has been seen, at best, as promulgating the benefits of studying Aristotle’s logic, so that his contribution is assessed as more didactical than conceptual. And on the other hand, those who do examine his innovations often consider them to be mistaken. As indicated by Chejne (1984, p. 2) contempt towards the logical work of Ibn Ḥazm was also present in its reception by the Eastern philosophers who accused him of deviating from Aristotelian logic and of dabbling in things beyond his capability. However, a reassessment of his work on logic has since begun, by delving into the ways the thinker of Córdoba studied the links between deontic and modal qualification of propositions. In this context Lameer’s (2013) paper on the logical sources of Ibn Ḥazm is worth mentioning; the author (p. 417, footnote 1) observes that, although, strictly speaking, it was al-Fārābī who first drew the parallelism between deontic and modal concepts, it was Ibn Ḥazm who developed it and worked it out in a more precise manner. A primary aim of this paper is to help fill some of these gaps by stressing the role of the work of Ibn Ḥazm in developing a notion of deontic necessity deeply rooted in legal normativity, and in explicitly discussing the transference between deontic and modal concepts. According to our view; the basic units of Islamic deontic logic are what we might call, indulging in terminological anachronism, heteronomous imperatives. As it turns out, the heteronomy of imperatives within Islamic legal systems contrasts with those of the purely moral realm, which seem to be closer to an autonomous conception of moral law. There it concurs again with Leibniz’s proposal to define obligatory as “what is necessary for a good person to do”. In the present paper, we will focus on the heteronomous imperatives of legal systems rather than on the imperatives of the purely moral realm. In this context, the work of Ibn Ḥazm extends the parallelism between the necessity of events and that of human actions stressed by his predecessors. According to our understanding, Ibn Ḥazm’s parallelism can be rendered explicit formally by means of a conditional (or hypothetical) structure shared by both deontic and modal propositions. Moreover, this structure makes apparent that this parallelism displays an underlying system of “degrees”. Indeed, while in the domain of events, given some conditions, it makes sense to distinguish between an event that is more likely to happen than another. Ibn Ḥazm speaks of near and distant possibility (such as the higher degree of likelihood of rain, given the condensation of clouds in December, and its lower degree, when the condensation occurs in summer); and, in the domain of actions, the Islamic notion of weighting actions determines degrees of virtue (or of legal and moral value). So whereas the degree of virtue of performing a forbidden act as determined by the distribution of sanction and reward is 0, we obtain the same value by pondering the likelihood of an impossible event to take place. Furthermore, as discussed in section II.3.2, the system of values at work in the parallelism can be seen as opening the way to a more direct correspondence. Thus, while in the realm of nature, likelihood of occurrence of an event is dependent upon the conditions specific to the occurrence of that event; while, in the realm of jurisprudence, likelihood of performing an action is dependent upon the distribution of reward and sanction specific to that action (being that, given the choice to perform or not perform a given action, those that will be rewarded are more likely to be performed than those that are not). According to this perspective, the point of the parallelism is that both deontic and modal qualifications measure the degree of an action or event to become actual; that is – indulging once more in anachronism (but this time from the Leibnizian background) – the degree measures how feasible (facile) an action or event may be. This suggests that Ibn Ḥazm’s perspectives already herald the links to probability and possibility explored by Leibniz six centuries later – see for example Leibniz’s (1671, A VI, I, p. 424-26) use of probability in the context of conditional right. Nevertheless, it also shows a crucial difference to the approach developed in the Elementa Jura Naturalis: whereas Leibniz’s studies seek to define what is to be just or virtuous, the logical system of deontic imperatives within Islamic jurisprudence presupposes that what is to be virtuous has already been settled. Determining what is to be virtuous is not achieved by logical reasoning within the system of legal jurisprudence, but by delving into the higher objectives of the Sharīʿa. While developing our point, we will delve into the logical structure of the heteronomous imperatives. This distinguishes our contribution from the existing literature, such as the papers of Chejne (1984), Lameer (2014), and Guerrero (1997, 2010, 2014), which do not provide a logical analysis of the deontic concepts put into work by Ibn Ḥazm. The true antecedent to the present paper is the work of Farid Zidani (2007, 2015), who, so far as we know, was the first to undertake such a task. Some of our own developments and general epistemological thoughts go beyond Ibn Ḥazm’s framework and motivations; mainly those contained in sections II.3.2 and IV. However, according to our view, these reflections suggest that Ibn Ḥazm’s approach has the substance for a broader and deeper exploration of the logic of norms. The paper is structured as follows:I.Ibn Ḥazm’s Logic of Heteronomous Imperatives. After presenting some extracts of the relevant text, we proceed by providing a formal reconstruction of the five forms of deontic modalities. II. A Landmark in the History of the Logical Analysis of Norms. Duties and Modalities. In this section, we study the transferences from deontic to modal necessity and possibility. We briefly compare the deontic system of Islamic Jurisprudence with that of Leibniz.III. Leibniz and Hypothetical Imperatives in Law.IV. Beyond Ibn Ḥazm: Conclusions and the Work Ahead. We will conclude the paper by discussing briefly some conceptual points that distinguish the logic of heteronomous imperatives from contemporary deontic logic. Our final words will discuss deontic-modal parallelism in the context of Ibn Ḥazm’s rejection of reasoning by conjecture and what we call “the internalization of nature.”. (shrink)

This essay explores the notion of moral exemplarity, positing that our morality is underpinned by moral exemplars – paradigmatic examples of virtuous individuals or actions. Theoretical precepts of moral exemplarity are explored across historical and contemporary contexts, including the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Stoic and Christian ethics, and recent works of Alexandro Ferrara and Linda Zagzebski. This essay debates the necessity of moral exemplars, the intrinsic moral and epistemic exemplarity, and the distinction between categorical and hypothetical exemplarity, as (...) well as referencing the paradoxical Kantian dismissals of moral exemplarity. It critiques current accounts of moral exemplarity and proposes a transcendental explanation, culminating in an examination of the “exemplarist categorical imperative.”. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a unifying approach to the analysis of understanding coherencies and understanding subject matters by highlighting the contextualist nature of understanding. Inspired by the relevant alternatives contextualism about knowledge, I will argue that understanding inherently has context-sensitive features and that a theory of understanding that highlights those features can incorporate our intuitions towards understanding as well as consolidate the different accounts of how to analyse understanding. In developing a contextualist account of understanding, I will argue that (...) an account of the features commonly taken to be central to understanding greatly benefits from a contextualist framework. Central to my analysis will be the claim that a person has to fulfill the function of a competent problem solver in order to qualify for the ascription of understanding. In addition to the theoretical elucidation of my contextualist approach to understanding, a demanding hypothetical scenario will be developed to function as a test case. (shrink)

In 1889, the German philologist Friedrich Blass isolated a section of Chapter 20 from Iamblichus’ Exhortation to Philosophy (mid- or late 3rd Century CE) as an extract from a lost sophistic or philosophical treatise from the late 5th Century BCE. In this article, I introduce the text, which is now known as 'Anonymus Iamblichi' (or 'the anonymous work preserved in Iamblichus') by appeal to its two main contexts (source preservation and original historical composition), translate and discuss all eight surviving (...) fragments in their entirety, and provide some closing remarks about its importance to this history of democratic thought. The text itself presents a series of very carefully interwoven arguments concerning the three “parts” of excellence (ἀρετή) – wisdom, courage, and eloquence – and their successful application in society. In the course of presenting this case, Anonymus Iamblichi comments on the conditions under which one should learn to be excellent (Fragments 1-2) and the ends to which one should direct one’s excellence (Fragments 3-4); he provides an anthropological discussion of the weaknesses of human psychology and its effects on the good man (Fragments 5-6) and an hypothetical thought experiment concerning the “Superman” (which naturally solicits comparison with Nietzsche’s übermensch) and his inability to overcome the multitude in a lawless state (Fragments 6 and 8); and a positive defense of law and justice, reflecting a pro-democratic philosophical perspective (Fragments 7-8) – a rara avis indeed in ancient philosophy. (shrink)

This paper considers the importance of play as a conventional space for hypothetical self-expression and self-trial, its importance for determination of identity, and for development of self-possibilities. Expanding such possibilities in play enables challenging of socially entrenched assumptions concerning possible and appropriate identities. Discussion is extended to the contexts of gender performance (drag) and sport-play. It is argued that play proceeds on the basis of a fundamental pretence of reality that must be taken seriously by its participants; this (...) discussion includes considerations of serious and ironical play, “playing-at”, and travesty. (shrink)

In this article, I make a philosophical case for the state to fund religious schools. Ultimately, I shall argue that the state has an obligation to fund and provide oversight of all schools irrespective of their religious or non-religious character. The education of children is in the public interest and therefore the state must assume its responsibility to its future citizens to ensure that they receive a quality education. Still, while both religious schools and the polity have much to be (...) gained from direct funding, I will show that parents and administrators of these schools may have reasons to be diffident toward the state and its hypothetical interference. While the focus of the paper is primarily on the American educational context, the philosophical questions related to state funding and oversight of religious schools transcend any one national context . (shrink)

This article develops a framework for analyzing and comparing privacy and privacy protections across (inter alia) time, place, and polity and for examining factors that affect privacy and privacy protection. This framework provides a method to describe precisely aspects of privacy and context and a flexible vocabulary and notation for such descriptions and comparisons. Moreover, it links philosophical and conceptual work on privacy to social science and policy work and accommodates different conceptions of the nature and value of privacy. The (...) article begins with an outline of the framework. It then refines the view by describing a hypothetical application. Finally, it applies the framework to a real‐world privacy issue—campaign finance disclosure laws in the United States and France. The article concludes with an argument that the framework offers important advantages to privacy scholarship and for privacy policy makers. (shrink)

Up until recently, most legal philosophers have argued that an action is a token of sanctioning if, and only if, (i) its performance brings about unwelcome consequences to the targets, and (ii) it is performed as a response to the breach of a duty. In this paper I take issue with this account. I first add some qualifications to it in order to present it in its most plausible form. After doing this, I advance a series of hypothetical cases (...) which suggests that this account fails. I then propose a new account of sanctioning, whereby an action is a token of sanctioning if, and only if, it is performed in an appropriate context and is apt for punishing wrongdoers. (shrink)

In decision-making based on multiple criteria, situations may arise where agents find their options to be neither better than, worse than nor equal to each other with respect to the relevant criteria. How, if at all, can a justified choice be made between such options? Are the options incomparable? This article explores a hypothetical case that illustrates how such a situation can arise in an environmental context; more specifically, it considers the deliberations of an imagined 'ethics committee' as it (...) struggles to decide whether or not a deep-sea mining project should be allowed to proceed. I argue that the case is best understood as involving options that are comparable in the sense of being 'on a par'. Working out from a discussion of Ruth Chang's 'self-governance' theory of choice in cases of parity, I suggest that, in the environmental context, the idea of choices expressing a moral identity may lead us in the direction of a plausible solution to these particularly challenging cases. (shrink)

Works of science fiction tend to describe hypothetical futures, or counterfactual pasts or presents, to entertain their readers. Philosophical thought experiments tend to describe counterfactual situations to test their readers’ philosophical intuitions. Indeed, works of science fiction can sometimes be read as containing thought experiments. I compare one especially famous thought experiment from Plato’s Republic with what I read as two thought experiments from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. All three thought experiments concern myths used in political contexts, and (...) comparing them permits me to analyze the morality of political mythologizing. (shrink)

There are two aspects to Wittgenstein’s method of deconstructing pseudo-philosophical problems that need to be distinguished: (1) describing actual linguistic practice, and (2) constructing hypothetical ‘language-games’. Both methods were, for Wittgenstein, indispensable means of clarifying the ‘grammar’ of expressions of our language -- i.e., the appropriate contexts for using those expressions – and thereby dissolving pseudo-philosophical problems. Though (2) is often conflated with (1), it is important to recognize that it differs from it in important respects. (1) can (...) be seen as functioning as a direct method of ‘proof’ (i.e., attempt to convince the reader of some thesis), and (2) as an indirect method of ‘proof’ -- proof by reductio ad absurdum. This essay will be devoted to clarifying (2) by forging an analogy with surrealism in art. (shrink)

Analytic just war theorists often attempt to construct ideal theories of military justice on the basis of intuitions about imaginary and sometimes outlandish examples, often taken from non-military contexts. This article argues for a sharp curtailment of this method and defends, instead, an empirically and historically informed approach to the ethical scrutiny of armed conflicts. After critically reviewing general philosophical reasons for being sceptical of the moral-theoretic value of imaginary hypotheticals, the article turns to some of the special problems (...) that this method raises for appraisals of warfare. It examines some of the hypothetical examples employed in the construction of Jeff McMahan’s revisionist just war theory, and finds that they sometimes stipulate incompre- hensible conditions, lead to argumentative impasses of diverging yet uncertain intuitions, and distract attention away from the real problems of war as we empirically know it. In contrast, empirical and historical studies of warfare rein- force the deep connections between facts and values, and compel theorists to face uncomfortable moral ambiguities. Perhaps most importantly, the analytic method of focusing on imaginary hypothetical examples can not only be distracting, but it can also be genuinely dangerous. Hence, the article pays special attention to the way in which a seemingly innocuous fiction like the famous Ticking Time Bomb scenario can come to frame a new paradigm of inhumanity in the treatment of prisoners of war. (shrink)

Deflationism, one of the influential philosophical doctrines of truth, holds that there is no property of truth, and that overt uses of the predicate "true" are redundant. However, the hypothetical examples used by theorists to exemplify deflationism are isolated sentences, offering little to examine what the predicate adds to meaning within context. We oppose the theory not on philosophical but on empirical grounds. We collect 7,610 occurrences of "it is true that" from 10 influential periodicals published in the United (...) States. We classify and annotate these with respect to the positions of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions that they contain. This way we investigate the contextual relationships between the proposition following "it is true that" with its surroundings. Overall, 34 different syntactical patterns are encountered. In some occurrences of "true", the predicate acts in the same manner as a performative verb does. These occurrences, having been observed in linguistically reliable media, constitute pragmatic counter-examples to deflationism. (shrink)

Requirement specifications in software engineering involve developing a conceptual model of a target domain. The model is based on ontological exploration of things in reality. Many things in such a process closely tie to problems in metaphysics, the field of inquiry of what reality fundamentally is. According to some researchers, metaphysicians are trying to develop an account of the world that properly conceptualizes the way it is, and software design is similar. Notions such as classes, object orientation, properties, instantiation, algorithms, (...) etc. are metaphysical concepts developed many years ago. Exploring the metaphysics of such notions aims to establish quality assurance though some objective foundation not subject to misapprehensions and conventions. Much metaphysical work might best be understood as a model-building process. Here, a model is viewed as a hypothetical structure that we describe and investigate to understand more complex, real-world systems. The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the metaphysical origins of conceptual modeling as exemplified by a specific proposed high-level model called thinging machines (TMs). The focus is on thimacs (things/machine) as a single category of TM modeling in the context of a two-phase world of staticity and dynamics. The general idea of this reality has been inspired by Deleuze’s ‘the virtual’ and related to the classical notions of Leibniz’s monads and Avicenna’s essence. The analysis of TMs leads to several interesting results about a thimac’s nature at the static and existence levels. (shrink)

Brogaard and Salerno (2008) argued that counter-examples to contraposition, strengthening the antecedent, and hypothetical syllogism involving subjunctive conditionals only seem to work because they involve a contextual fallacy where the context assumed in the premise(s) is illicitly shifted in the conclusion. To avoid such counter-examples they have proposed that the context must remain fixed when evaluating an argument for validity. That is the Brogaard-Salerno Stricture. Tristan Haze (2016), however, has recently objected that intuitively valid argumentative forms such as conjunction (...) introduction do not satisfy this constraint. This paper has two goals. First, it argues that the Brogaard-Salerno Stricture is not violated in Haze’s putative counter-example. Second, it argues that since this stricture blocks the usual counter-examples to instances of classical argumentative forms that involve indicative or subjunctive conditionals, it is reasonable to infer that indicative and subjunctive conditionals are material. (shrink)

Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2019, is an extended thought experiment on the nature of memory, minds, and persons. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in the film—and its implications for personal identity—raises poignant questions for the ethicist, epistemologist, neuroscientist, metaphysician, and cognitive scientist. In this paper, I explore the rich insights the film has to offer interdisciplinary studies of memory, providing a case study in how narrative (...) can uniquely contribute to memory research, while also maintaining philosophical rigor and fidelity to scientific discoveries about memory. Turning to the philosophical implications of memory erasure, I consider memory erasure in the context of several leading views of personal identity and proposed answers to the persistence question of personal identity, assessing the challenges and complications that the memory erasure thought experiment brought to life by Eternal Sunshine poses to these theories. I argue that the psychological continuity view of personal identity—in its various iterations—does not allow an individual to truly survive the memory erasure procedure. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in Eternal Sunshine—and its metaphysical and epistemological consequences—reveal how we establish the relationship between memories and selfhood, how to define personhood in the presence of both hypothetical and real-world memory loss, and what experiences we value in human life. (shrink)

Contemporary philosopher David Benatar has advanced the self-evidently controversial claim that “coming into existence is always a harm.” Benatar’s argument turns on the basic asymmetry between pleasure and pain, an asymmetry he seeks to explain by the principle that those who never exist cannot be deprived. Benatar’s import is almost incredible: humans should cease to procreate immediately, thereby engendering the extinction of the species—a view known as “anti-natalism.” According to many of his readers, the ancient Hebrew sage Qoheleth expresses a (...) pessimistic nihilism that runs as thick as Benatar’s. Prima facie grounding for this assertion is that Qoheleth, like Benatar, raises the issue of whether coming into existence may be a harm—and gives an affirmative answer. In two passages, Ecclesiastes 6:1-6 and 4:1-3, Qoheleth declares that an unborn hypothetical person is “better off” than their existent counterpart. Yet the meaning and implication of these words is far from obvious. Does Qoheleth imply that the non-exister’s state, and non-existence in general, is universally superior to existence? Or is he instead speaking exceptionally, of particular persons in rare circumstances? By examining the two “better”-statements in their literary context, I will argue that Qoheleth intends these examples as exceptions. He does not go so far as to make the supremely nihilistic claim that coming into existence is always, or even generally, a net harm; yet, he does concede that in certain cases, it can be. Beyond this, I will explore how the two thinkers’ divergent conclusions can be traced to a deeper difference of philosophical method. This question concerning non-existence opens a window to Qoheleth’s broader scheme of values and therefore serves as a surprisingly useful entry point by which to engage his philosophy. The paper utilizes the methodology Jaco Gericke has recently termed “philosophical criticism,” but specifically applied to Qoheleth. (shrink)

Does the idea of justice make sense only in the human world? Can it make sense also in the world of non-human animals? Put another way, is there scope for justice in the animal world, or is it simply a “might is right” world? Starting from recent research of ethologists, philosophers, psychologists, and jurists, we will reflect on the hypothesis of the existence of an “animal justice” through the identification of three possible contexts of justice in the animal world (...) (distributive justice, ludic fairness, retributive justice) and the analysis of a famous experiment on justice among monkeys. This research allows us to explore the axiological dimension of the hypothetical deontic world of non human animals. (shrink)

Democracy is usually contrasted with the concept of dictatorship, and is defined as a type of government in which power flows from the citizens to the leaders of government, who are selected through free elections. This article argues, that if the concept of democracy is generalized to be universally applicable, then the concept of hypothetical gods’ right to rule results in dictatorship. Whereas the concepts of dictator and tyrant originally had a more positive meaning, those meanings have changed. However, (...) the concept of the gods in the philosophical debate has avoided a similar redefinition in light of democracy, despite the fact, that it involves the same negation of modern fundamental rights. The basic democratic idea posits that all of its members have a full and equal status. If this status is generalized to be universally applicable, then it follows that humankind likewise are not second and first class among hypothetical gods. The existence or nonexistence of the gods is here defined as the secondary question, whereas the principal acceptance of hypothetical gods’ right to rule in a democratic context with respect to concepts of freedom is defined as the primary question. The position of heroical apatheism is argued as an alternative to positions such as theism, atheism, and agnosticism. These positions only concern themselves with the ontological or epistemological question of whether the gods exist, whereas heroical apatheism concerns itself with the primary component missing so far, namely democratic rights and dignity. This is a discussion that I consider as having been overlooked in modern philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Horwich gives a fine analysis of Wittgenstein (W) and is a leading W scholar, but in my view, they all fall short of a full appreciation, as I explain at length in this review and many others. If one does not understand W (and preferably Searle also) then I don't see how one could have more than a superficial understanding of philosophy and of higher order thought and thus of all complex behavior (psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, literature, society). In a (...) nutshell, W demonstrated that when you have shown how a sentence is used in the context of interest, there is nothing more to say. I will start with a few notable quotes and then give what I think are the minimum considerations necessary to understand Wittgenstein, philosophy and human behavior. -/- First one might note that putting “meta” in front of any word should be suspect. W remarked e.g., that metamathematics is mathematics like any other. The notion that we can step outside philosophy (i.e., the descriptive psychology of higher order thought) is itself a profound confusion. Another irritation here (and throughout academic writing for the last 4 decades) is the constant reverse linguistic sexism of “her” and “hers” and “she” or “he/she” etc., where “they” and “theirs” and “them” would do nicely. Likewise, the use of the French word 'repertoire' where the English 'repertory' will do quite well. The major deficiency is the complete failure (though very common) to employ what I see as the hugely powerful and intuitive two systems view of HOT and Searle’s framework which I have outlined above. This is especially poignant in the chapter on meaning p111 et seq. (especially in footnotes 2-7), where we swim in very muddy water without the framework of automated true only S1, propositional dispositional S2, COS etc. One can also get a better view of the inner and the outer by reading e.g., Johnston or Budd (see my reviews). Horwich however makes many incisive comments. I especially liked his summary of the import of W’s anti-theoretical stance on p65. He needs to give more emphasis to ‘On Certainty’, recently the subject of much effort by Daniele Moyal- Sharrock, Coliva and others and summarized in my recent articles. -/- Horwich is first rate and his work well worth the effort. One hopes that he (and everyone) will study Searle and some modern psychology as well as Hutto, Read, Hutchinson, Stern, Moyal-Sharrock, Stroll, Hacker and Baker etc. to attain a broad modern view of behavior. Most of their papers are on academia dot edu and philpapers dot org , but for PMS Hacker see his papers on his Oxford page. -/- He gives one of the most beautiful summaries of where an understanding of Wittgenstein leaves us that I have ever seen. -/- “There must be no attempt to explain our linguistic/conceptual activity (PI 126) as in Frege’s reduction of arithmetic to logic; no attempt to give it epistemological foundations (PI 124) as in meaning based accounts of a priori knowledge; no attempt to characterize idealized forms of it (PI 130) as in sense logics; no attempt to reform it (PI 124, 132) as in Mackie’s error theory or Dummett’s intuitionism; no attempt to streamline it (PI 133) as in Quine’s account of existence; no attempt to make it more consistent (PI 132) as in Tarski’s response to the liar paradoxes; and no attempt to make it more complete (PI 133) as in the settling of questions of personal identity for bizarre hypothetical ‘teleportation’ scenarios.” -/- Finally, let me suggest that with the perspective I have encouraged here, W is at the center of contemporary philosophy and psychology and is not obscure, difficult or irrelevant, but scintillating, profound and crystal clear and that to miss him is to miss one of the greatest intellectual adventures possible. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Over 40 years ago I read a small grey book with metaphysics in the title which began with the words “Metaphysics is dead. Wittgenstein has killed it.” I am one of many who agree but sadly the rest of the world has not gotten the message. Shoemaker’s work is nonsense on stilts but is unusual only in that it never deviates into sense from the first paragraph to the last. At least with Dennett, Carruthers, Churchland etc. one gets a breath (...) of fresh air when they discuss cognitive science (imagining they are still doing philosophy). As W showed so beautifully, the confusions that lead to metaphysics are universal and nearly inescapable aspects of our psychology. They occur not only in all thinking on behavior but throughout science as well. It’s easy to find examples in Hawking, Weinberg, Penrose, Green, who of course have no idea they have left science and entered metaphysics, that the statement they just made is not a matter of fact at all but a matter of conceptual (linguistic) confusion. “Law, event, space, time, force, matter, proof, connection, cause, follows, physical”, etc., all have clear uses in certain technical contexts, but these blend insensibly into quite different uses that have little in common but the spelling. Since it is pointless to waste time deconstructing Shoemaker line by line, showing the same errors over and over, I will describe some facts about how our psychology (language) works and with this outline and the references I give it is quite straightforward to give a meaningful description of the world in place of the metaphysical fantasies. If I were to debate Shoemaker we would never get beyond the title. Horwich gives one of the most beautiful summaries of where an understanding of Wittgenstein leaves us that I have ever seen. “There must be no attempt to explain our linguistic/conceptual activity (PI 126) as in Frege’s reduction of arithmetic to logic; no attempt to give it epistemological foundations (PI 124) as in meaning based accounts of a priori knowledge; no attempt to characterize idealized forms of it (PI 130) as in sense logics; no attempt to reform it (PI 124, 132) as in Mackie’s error theory or Dummett’s intuitionism; no attempt to streamline it (PI 133) as in Quine’s account of existence; no attempt to make it more consistent (PI 132) as in Tarski’s response to the liar paradoxes; and no attempt to make it more complete (PI 133) as in the settling of questions of personal identity for bizarre hypothetical ‘teleportation’ scenarios.” Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Following an analysis of the state of investigations and clinical outcomes in the Alzheimer's research field, I argue that the widely-accepted 'amyloid cascade' mechanistic explanation of Alzheimer's disease appears to be fundamentally incomplete. In this context, I propose that a framework termed 'principled mechanism' (PM) can help with remedying this problem. First, using a series of five 'tests', PM systematically compares different components of a given mechanistic explanation against a paradigmatic set of criteria, and hints at various ways of making (...) the mechanistic explanation more 'complete'. These steps will be demonstrated using the amyloid explanation, and its missing or problematic mechanistic elements will be highlighted. Second, PM makes an appeal for the discovery and application of 'biological principles' (BPs), which approximate ceteris paribus laws and are operative at the level of a biological cell. As such, although thermodynamic, evolutionary, ecological and other laws or principles from chemistry and the broader life sciences could inform them, BPs should be considered ontologically unique. BPs could augment different facets of the mechanistic explanation but also allow further independent nomological explanation of the phenomenon. Whilst this overall strategy can be complementary to certain 'New Mechanist' approaches, an important distinction of the PM framework is its equal attention to the explanatory utility of biological principles. Lastly, I detail two hypothetical BPs, and show how they could each inform and improve the potentially incomplete mechanistic aspects of the amyloid explanation and also how they could provide independent explanations of the cellular features associated with Alzheimer's disease. (shrink)

The phenomenon of sexbots has lately been receiving increasing academic attention. The forms and uses of this humanoid sexual technology with AI have been analyzed and discussed by philosophers, sexologists, ethicists, and legal experts. Ethical debates about possible designs and uses receive the most attention in academic discussions. Quantitative and qualitative studies on how people outside this context look at and think about sexbots are scarce. Especially research with the online context as a research site seems to be missing. However, (...) This research site can be fruitful to explore people's (moral) attitudes, arguments, and intuitions. An inductive thematic analysis of online discussions about sexbots was carried out on three different subreddits on Reddit. Three themes were constructed. Themes include the assumed role of sexbots as seen from incel ideology, reasonings on hypothetical experiences of using a sexbot, and the use and meaning of sexbots in a context of political and sexual identity. The language in the discussions indicated a dominant male heteronormative perspective. Although similar elements to the scholarly debate like the use of sexbots to channel sexual misconduct or making analogies between the believed effects of the use of sexbots and pornography occurred, differences to the debate occurred in the themes of the hypothetical tendency to use a sexbot, and the indications on how it could change our definitions of ‘having sex’. These elements point toward a research gap in the academic discourse. Finally, the themes were aligned with the feminist discussion on sexbots. Richardon’s call for a ban and Kubes’ queer reading of sexbots were linked to our analysis. Further research could include exploring multiple online research sites to complement or contrast the indicated male heteronormative perspective with other perspectives ( LGBTQAI+,...) on the phenomenon of sexbots. (shrink)

This paper proposes a critical analysis of the essential criteria to define the concept of the political as presented by German jurist and philosopher, Carl Schmitt. Based on the essence of the political -i.e. the friend-enemy duality-, the objective is to explore the practical implications resulting from the actual possibilities of confrontation, the key scope being the analysis of a totalitarian potential from a Schmittian´s perspective. In Schmitt´s thought, this distinction is the fundamental reason for the definition of the political. (...) Not every opponent is necessarily the enemy --the other one, the unknown- and likely to be physically destroyed and exterminated but only a public enemy (hostis). Given its indeterminate nature, the enemy may be prescribed according to the sovereign design or, in the context of Nazi Germany where Carl Schmitt lived, in accordance with the President of the Reich´s designs. A hypothetical-deductive methodology is used in this work based on bibliographical research, in particular regarding Carl Schmitt´s theoretical constructions. (shrink)

Reviews of studies on sexual orientation reveal that researchers have not developed a clear conceptual definition of sexual orientation and that most researchers have failed to provide a theoretical framework for their studies. While some scholars recognize the conceptual confusion that has plagued the development of a theory of sexual orientation, most researchers study sexual orientation as if it were an immutable, essential nature of an individual without questioning how social context influences categorization. The problem with this approach is that (...) components have been hypothesized to be part of the construct, but there has been no systematic study of how to judge the accuracy of the construct. The present study suggests that, because categories of sexual orientation are socially constructed, the study of sexual orientation would benefit from an understanding of how the ordinary language community defines and categorizes sexual orientation. The purpose of the present study was to test the semantics of various category labels of sexual orientation used in ordinary language. Three hypothesized components of sexual orientation , involving either same-sex or opposite-sex oriented behavior, along with a fourth stimulus condition were manipulated in a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design. Subjects were 371 college students who completed a questionnaire in which they were asked to give a one-word description in response to written statements about hypothetical individuals described as male or female who engage in various same- or opposite-sex behavior. Contrary to what was hypothesized, results demonstrate that there were some necessary and sufficient conditions for categorizing sexual orientation. Also contrary to a proto-behavioral hypothesis, the results of the relative strength of the three components in predicting category label indicate that sexual attraction was the strongest predictor, followed by overt sexual behavior, and sexual fantasy, respectively. The most impressive finding was the overwhelming support for the impurity hypothesis in which descriptions with any same-sex oriented behavior appeared to be judged to contaminate the individual's sexual orientation resulting in greater frequencies of responses of "homosexual" compared to other category labels. Finally, as predicted, overt sexual behavior was least predictive of the sexual orientation of females with sexual fantasy being the most predictive. For descriptions of males, sexual attraction was the most important predictor. Provided in the discussion are possible explanations for the current findings, a description of the limitations and implications of the study, and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Now we live in the age of professionalism, and the public office in any nation is some reservoir of intelligent competition in their specific field. They are the leaders and paragon of community as a loyal and professional fiduciary. A hybrid nature of officers creates the rules and exercises their professional knowledge to serve a public good. The not unusual word,“scholar practitioner” may reflect the tendency of learning community within the business and government officers. They wish to overcome a bum (...) rap, say, most unproductive group or bureaucrats in maze, attributed to the bureaucrats generally. They now are required to be not only a manager but also professional researcher for his or her specific field of expertise. Beyond this duality, they may face with the challenge from a serious question about the tenet or theory within either a managerial responsibility or any research responsibility in the discipline of public policy. This paper begins with the classic loci for the theories and tenets, which have interacted with the research and professional circle. Then the author illustrates one hypothetical ego, who now works for the Korean government. In pursuit of his work role,he is situated to ramble encompassing the tenet, theories, and assumption of public policy discipline. The paper suggests three theories considered most foundational in the context of Korean politics and history at modern times, which would possibly be applicable to many other similar nations in the post colonial period. The author argues that it could be exemplary for the policy makers or administrators, who have to learn and research. (shrink)

In this article, I present a schema for generating counterexamples to the argument form known as Hypothetical Syllogism with indicative conditionals. If my schema for generating counterexamples to HS works as I think it does, then HS is invalid for indicative conditionals.

We investigate a basic probabilistic dynamic semantics for a fragment containing conditionals, probability operators, modals, and attitude verbs, with the aim of shedding light on the prospects for adding probabilistic structure to models of the conversational common ground.