This paper is a reply to A. A. Howsepian in "Religious Studies" 32 (1996), 357-70. Howsepian there argues that Mormons are atheists because they acknowledge no greatest conceivable being and fail to have a fitting object of worship. Howsepian accuses Mormons of crude polytheism and of conceiving of their divinities as capable of progression. In reply, it is pointed out that Howsepian frequently misrepresents Mormon theology. Once a distinction is made between divine persons (which may be multiple) and divinity itself (...) (which is one but may be manifest in a community of divine persons), Mormon theology can be seen to be theistic if orthodox trinitarian Christianity is theistic. Mormon beliefs do recognize potentiality and change in deity, but in this they are like other 20th century religious systems which have rejected Greek metaphysics as a basis for theism. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

Firearm injury in the United States is a public health crisis in which physicians are uniquely situated to intervene. However, their ability to mitigate harm is limited by a complex array of laws and regulations that shape their role in firearm injury prevention. This piece uses four clinical scenarios to illustrate how these laws and regulations impact physician practice, including patient counseling, injury reporting, and the use of court orders and involuntary holds. Unintended consequences on clinical practice of laws intended (...) to reduce firearm injury are also discussed. Lessons drawn from these cases suggest that physicians require more nuanced education on this topic, and that policymakers should consult front-line healthcare providers when designing firearm policies. (shrink)

Identification of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) has been significantly enhanced due to the rapid advancement in sequencing technologies. On the other hand, semantic annotation of ncRNA data lag behind their identification, and there is a great need to effectively integrate discovery from relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a precisely defined ncRNA controlled vocabulary, which can fill a specific and highly needed niche in unification of ncRNA biology.

The study examines perceptions of managers, nonmanagerial employees, students, and union officers regarding the legitimacy of managerial influence over various subordinate behaviors and beliefs. The results indicate that: (1) perceived legitimacy has decreased since a comparable study by Schein and Ott in 1962, (2) perceived legitimacy is generally related to proximity to the managerial role, (3) there is a high degree of consensus on the relative legitimacy of influencing various behaviors and beliefs, and (4) only issues of direct relevance to (...) work and task performance are currently perceived as legitimate areas for managerial influence. Theoretical, research, and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. This article reveals the understanding of the concept of nature in the works of the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Henry David Thoreau is an American philosopher, poet, essayist, naturalist and political activist. Together with Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend and mentor, he is considered one of the founders of the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism was a powerful movement of American philosophy of the 19th century. It was characterized by focusing on (...) the problem of human self-knowledge, human's returning to own essence, living in harmony with nature, as well as criticism of modern society and active abolitionism. M e t h o d s. The article uses both general scientific methods and special methods, such as – the method of historical-philosophical reconstruction, which made it possible to reproduce the ideas of the American thinker, the hermeneutic method – for explaining individual positions of the philosopher. In addition, literary-critical methods were used, for the possibility of using various primary sources, and systematic method – to identify a systematized structure in the philosophical work of H. D. Thoreau. R e s u l t s. One of the main features of transcendentalism is a special interest in reflection on nature and a special approach to it. Thus, the concept of nature is present in most of H. D. Thoreau's works, and it is the central topic of his philosophical searches. The concept of nature in his works appears in different contexts, acquires different meanings. Thus, H. D. Thoreau talks about nature in the context of nature, in the context of poetic creativity, in his philosophical searches, in his vision of man and in his argumentation of his own political position. However, the different meanings that H. D. Thoreau attaches to the concept of nature do not contradict each other, but, on the contrary, complement and clarify his understanding of nature. C o n c l u s i o n s. This article proposes to consider the use of the concept of nature by H. D. Thoreau in the following aspects: Nature and Peculiarities of nature as a subject of scientific knowledge. Nature and The relationship between nature and culture through the relationship between "the wild" and society. Nature and From naturalism to humanism. Nature as an inner essence of man and solitude with nature as a return to this essence. (shrink)

Doxastic involuntarists have paid insufficient attention to two debates in contemporary epistemology: the permissivism debate and the debate over norms of assertion and belief. In combination, these debates highlight a conception of belief on which, if you find yourself in what I will call an ‘equipollent case’ with respect to some proposition p, there will be no reason why you can’t believe p at will. While doxastic involuntarism is virtually epistemological orthodoxy, nothing in the entire stock of objections to belief (...) at will blocks this route to doxastic voluntarism. Against the backdrop of the permissivism debate and the literature on norms of belief and assertion, doxastic involuntarism emerges as an article of faith, not the obvious truth it’s usually purported to be. (shrink)

Purists think that changes in our practical interests can’t affect what we know unless those changes are truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. Impurists disagree. They think changes in our practical interests can affect what we know even if those changes aren’t truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. I argue that impurists are right, but for the wrong reasons, since they haven’t appreciated the best argument for their own view. Together with “Minimalism and the Limits of (...) Warranted Assertability Maneuvers,” “The Pragmatic Encroachment Debate,” and “Anti-Intellectualism” (below), this paper constitutes my attempt to refute the entire pragmatic encroachment debate. As I show in this paper, there is an argument for impurism sitting in plain sight that is considerably more plausible than any extant argument for pragmatism. (shrink)

Intellectualists disagree with anti-intellectualists about the relationship between knowledge and truth. According to intellectualists, this relationship is intimate. Knowledge entails true belief, and in fact everything required for knowledge is somehow relevant to the probability that the belief in question is true. According to anti-intellectualists, this relationship isn’t intimate. Or, at least, it’s not as intimate as intellectualists think. Factors that aren’t in any way relevant to the probability that a belief is true can make a difference to whether it (...) counts as knowledge. In this paper, I give a new argument for anti-intellectualism and draw out consequences of this argument for the pragmatic encroachment debate. The standard purist objection to pragmatism is that pragmatism entails anti-intellectualism. As I show, anti-intellectualism follows from premises that are plausible even if purism is true, so the standard purist objection to pragmatism fails. (shrink)

Although task-unrelated thinking has been increasingly investigated in recent years, the content and correlates of everyday off-task thought in clinical d...

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This qualitative study describes the lived experience of physicians who work in communities that have experienced a public mass shooting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen physicians involved in eight separate mass casualty shooting incidents in the United States. Four major themes emerged from constant comparative analysis: The psychological toll on physicians: “I wonder if I'm broken”; the importance of and need for mass casualty shooting preparedness: “[We need to] recognize this as a public health concern and train physicians to (...) manage it”; massive media attention: “The media onslaught was unbelievable”; and commitment to advocacy for a public health approach to firearm violence: “I want to do whatever I can to prevent some of these terrible events.”. (shrink)

Is knowledge consistent with literally any credence in the relevant proposition, including credence 0? Of course not. But is credence 0 the only credence in p that entails that you don’t know that p? Knowledge entails belief (most epistemologists think), and it’s impossible to believe that p while having credence 0 in p. Is it true that, for every value of ‘x,’ if it’s impossible to know that p while having credence x in p, this is simply because it’s impossible (...) to believe that p while having credence x in p? If so, is it possible to believe that p while having (say) credence 0.4 in p? These questions aren’t standard epistemological fare, at least in part because many epistemologists think their answers are obvious, but they have unanticipated consequences for epistemology. Let ‘improbabilism’ name the thesis that it’s possible to know that p while having a credence in p below 0.5. Improbabilism will strike many epistemologists as absurd, but careful reflection on these questions reveals that, if improbabilism is false, then all of the most plausible theories of knowledge are also false. Or so I argue in this paper. Since improbabilism is widely rejected by epistemologists (at least implicitly), this paper reveals a tension between all of the most plausible theories of knowledge and a widespread assumption in epistemology. (shrink)

In recent years, sequencing technologies have enabled the identification of a wide range of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Unfortunately, annotation and integration of ncRNA data has lagged behind their identification. Given the large quantity of information being obtained in this area, there emerges an urgent need to integrate what is being discovered by a broad range of relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a systematically structured and precisely defined controlled vocabulary for the (...) domain of ncRNAs, thereby facilitating the discovery, curation, analysis, exchange, and reasoning of data about structures of ncRNAs, their molecular and cellular functions, and their impacts upon phenotypes. The goal of NCRO is to serve as a common resource for annotations of diverse research in a way that will significantly enhance integrative and comparative analysis of the myriad resources currently housed in disparate sources. It is our belief that the NCRO ontology can perform an important role in the comprehensive unification of ncRNA biology and, indeed, fill a critical gap in both the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Library and the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) BioPortal. Our initial focus is on the ontological representation of small regulatory ncRNAs, which we see as the first step in providing a resource for the annotation of data about all forms of ncRNAs. The NCRO ontology is free and open to all users. (shrink)

There is a growing movement advocating for using closed border policies as a tool for solving the climate crisis. On this view, which I call the green border argument, fighting climate change requires drastic reductions in the global population and/or per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, immigration into high-income countries—particularly from low-income countries—increases per capita emissions while leaving the population untouched. Therefore, the green border theorist argues, we should limit entry into high-income countries. I explain why this is a (...) mistake and why the political left should embrace a pro climate and pro migrant politic. -/- First, the argument significantly overstates the impact of immigration on global GHG emissions. Second, the progressive green border argument is normatively incoherent. It advocates for closing borders and eliminating poverty and other rights violations in sending countries. However, given the relationship between emissions and income, this argument would require rejecting all poverty reduction strategies—a conclusion the progressive theorist wants to avoid. Third, the argument is counterproductive. An open border politic better promotes climate justice. A key reason is that high-income countries perceive immigration to be one of the most serious short- and medium- term costs of climate change. Whereas closure allows them to avoid this “cost,” open borders would force them to eliminate push factors, incentivizing global adaptation and mitigation strategies. Moreover, a closed border politic creates divisions between those affected, undermining cross-border solidarity and contributing to the perception that environmentalism is a white, middle-class movement. (shrink)

Conceptual Focus in Social Encounters: the Case of Directives The present analysis focuses on highlighting the conceptual focus on groups as a specific property of discourse in young peer groups of Polish speakers. Its alternative is the conceptual focus on individual interlocutors; the latter is implicitly assumed to be an interactive norm in a vast body of pragmatic studies dealing with the performance of speech acts in both monolingual and comparative setups. The analysis is based on empirical material comprising interaction (...) in young peer groups in Poland, Great Britain and Germany under constant experimental conditions, made possible by the international commercial project "Big Brother" belonging to the genre of reality T.V. (shrink)

“Don’t be jealous of your sister.” “Don’t be angry with your father.” “You should be more forgiving.” “You ought to feel terrible for what you’ve done.” “You ought to feel ashamed of yourself!” It is common practice within our society to morally reprimand people for their emotions, thereby expressing a kind of moralism: the idea that there are morally right and morally wrong ways to feel. Drawing on an alternative way of engaging with emotions derived from my experience working clinically (...) with people with personality disorders, I argue against the value of this common practice and the moralization of emotions that underpins it. Stop telling people what to feel! (shrink)

According to attributor virtue epistemology (the view defended by Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and others), S knows that p only if her true belief that p is attributable to some intellectual virtue, competence, or ability that she possesses. Attributor virtue epistemology captures a wide range of our intuitions about the nature and value of knowledge, and it has many able defenders. Unfortunately, it has an unrecognized consequence that many epistemologists will think is sufficient for rejecting it: namely, it makes knowledge (...) depend on factors that aren't truth-relevant, even in the broadest sense of this term, and it also makes knowledge depend in counterintuitive ways on factors that are truth-relevant in the more common narrow sense of this term. As I show in this paper, the primary objection to interest-relative views in the pragmatic encroachment debate can be raised even more effectively against attributor virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Helen Frowe (2014) depicts the following fictional case: Fran is being raped by Eric and can’t stop him with violent resistance. Nevertheless, she resists and breaks Eric’s wrist. The infliction of defensive harm on Eric is intuitively permissible, yet it runs counter to the dominant view that defensive harms must stand a reasonable chance of success. Call this the Success Condition (SC). To solve this problem, Daniel Statman (2008) contends that even if Victim’s defensive harms fail to prevent her rape, (...) they do prevent the destruction of another good, her honor, and thus SC is satisfied. Recently, Joseph Bowen (2016) has critiqued Statman’s proposal by showing that honor-based justifications for defensive harming are too permissive. In this paper, I contend that Statman’s proposal is too restrictive. First, I review Statman’s accounts of honor, dishonor, and non-honor. Second, I argue that Statman’s account requires Fran’s honor to be lost or damaged if she doesn’t resist—a highly offensive conclusion about rape victims. Third, I explain why the best alternative to this (i.e., allowing Fran’s honor to be maintained either way) satisfies SC but not the necessity condition. I conclude that we ought to reject Statman’s solution. (shrink)

The Animal Rights Thesis (ART) entails that nonhuman animals like pigs and cows have moral rights, including rights not to be unjustly harmed. If ART is true, it appears to imply the permissibility of killing ranchers, farmers, and zookeepers in defense of animals who will otherwise be unjustly killed. This is the Militancy Objection (MO) to ART. I consider four replies to MO and reject three of them. First, MO fails because animals lack rights, or lack rights of sufficient strength (...) to justify other-defensive killing. Second, MO fails because those who unjustly threaten animals aren't liable or, if they are liable, their liability is outweighed by other considerations (e.g., a strong presumption against vigilante killing). I then argue both of these fail. Third, MO succeeds because animal militancy is permissible. Fourth, MO fails because there aren't liability justifications for defensive killing in general (i.e., pacifism is true). I argue that there's thoroughgoing epistemic parity between the Militancy View (MV) and the Pacifist View (PV), and that two considerations favor PV over MV. First, because under conditions of uncertainty, we should believe rights-bearers retain rather than lose their rights, which PV affirms and MV denies. Second, because PV is intrinsically likelier than MV to be true since PV at worst affirms wrongful letting die and MV at worst affirms wrongful killing, the latter of which is intrinsically harder to justify than the former. (shrink)

In a welcome broadening of the discussion surrounding responsibility in healthcare, Rebecca Brown and Julian Savulescu propose that standard philosophical accounts of responsibility are too narrow to be useful. Although these accounts of course differ with respect to the exact conditions they posit as necessary and sufficient for responsibility, they are nonetheless relatively united in their focus on a single individual at a single moment in time. Suppose a subject S performs an action a at a time t that has (...) harmful consequences for their health. Is S responsible for a and derivatively their condition? Brown and Savulescu argue that answers to this question that fail to consider both what S was or was not doing at times other than t and what people other than S were doing to encourage or discourage S from performing a cannot do justice to actions which are habitual and socially influenced—such as unhealthy patterns of eating, exercise and substance use. Given that it is precisely these kinds of patterns of behaviour that typically inflame the discussion of responsibility in healthcare, Brown and Savulescu’s insistence on the need for a diachronic and socially contextualised account of responsibility is essential— if we are to consider the issue of responsibility in healthcare at all. But should we and, if so, why? With respect to this question, Brown and Savulescu hope to sit on the fence. This is both because they recognise the complexity and balance of arguments for and against the view …. (shrink)

The article is devoted to revealing the essence of good and evil in the situation of dialogue between God and man according to M.Buber's philosophical worldview. It is noted that the measurement of the world from the position of dualism has found its way in the philosophy of M.Buber through the correlation of communication in the prism of the subject-object contradiction «I – You», «I – It», where I – is an attempt to stick out a man himself a permanent (...) subject over the objects, and the violation of dialogue with God leads to thinking about God from theodicea to atheism. This article uses primary source research directly the works of the philosopher, as well as achievements of other researchers, such as T.Lyncea, A.Outn, A.Ogurtsov, I.Bergolak. The main directions of the article are: analysis of the dialogue structure of the world according to the philosophy of M.Buber; definition of the role of Faith in the system of dialogue between God and man; development of the ontology model of good and evil in the philosophy of M.Buber. In the philosophy of M.Buber distinguishes three types of dialogue, which are passed through the concept of» should «and the concept of» is», that is, a person conducts a dialogue from the position of his own self-acceptance, respectively, as he believes it is worth entering into a dialogue with what is understood as what is relevant to the dialogue. Dialogue with God, man leads from a position of determining who God is in this dialogue, and consequently makes certain claims regarding the rules of communication. In such a dialogue, faith is lost as trust and faith as faith of unsubstantiated. The article States that the ontological model of the world from a position of Christian theodicy is not a dialogue, built by combining two faiths. M.Buber compares two models of communication with God – early Christians and Jews and determines that it was not necessary for early Jews to justify God regarding the creation of evil. This means that God is the Creator and the original source of both good and evil, but only through man evil is separated from good, and acquires its own essence. (shrink)

The recent explosion of philosophical papers on Confederate and Colonialist statues centers on a central question: When, if ever, is it permissible to admire a person? This paper contends it’s not just Confederates and slavers whose reputations are on the line, but also pacifists like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Daisy Bates whose commitments to pacifism meant they were unwilling to save others using defensive violence, including others they talked into endangering themselves for the sake of racial equality. Other things (...) being equal, that’s gravely immoral if pacifism is false, and we shouldn’t admire people guilty of grave immorality. So, it appears that we shouldn’t admire Bates or King, which is counterintuitive. To solve this problem, I explore several possibilities: that only selective traits of Bates and King are admirable, that Bates and King are admirable despite their grave immorality, and that Bates and King are admirable by virtue of their integrity. However, each of these proposals fails: the first because it inadequately captures our moral phenomenology (we admire people, not just their traits), the second because it ignores the extent to which gravely immoral commitments are constitutive of a person’s moral character, and the third because we ought not to admire people for acting on their immoral beliefs. The paper concludes, first, that either pacifists like Bates and King aren’t admirable or they are, and the latter presupposes the truth of pacifism. Second, I borrow from Vanessa Carbonell’s ratcheting-up argument from moral sainthood to argue that pacifists like Bates and King provide epistemic defeaters to the objection that pacifism is unreasonably costly. Thus, not only are pacifists admirable only if they’re right—they are right. (shrink)

? We gratefully acknowledge the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which provided a grant for the support of this work. E.T. is also supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. 1 See David Woodruff Smith.

Most punishment theorists seem to accept the following claim: punishment is intended to harm the punishee. A significant minority of punishment theorists reject the claim, though. I defend the claim from objections, focusing mostly on recent objections that haven’t gotten much attention. My objective is to reinforce the already strong case for the intentions claim. I first clarify what advocates of the intentions claim mean by it and state the standard argument for it. Then I critically discuss a wide variety (...) of objections to the claim and to the standard argument for it. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen proposes a criterion of philosophical success. He takes it to support an extremely pessimistic view about philosophy. He thinks that all philosophical arguments for substantive conclusions fail, including the argument from evil. I’m more optimistic on both counts. I’ll identify problems with van Inwagen’s criterion and propose an alternative. I’ll then explore the differing implications of our criteria. On my view, philosophical arguments can succeed and the argument from evil isn’t obviously a failure.

I’ll raise a problem for Retributivism, the view that legal punishment is justified on the basis of desert. I’ll focus primarily on Mitchell Berman’s recent defense of the view. He gives one of the most sophisticated and careful statements of it. And his argument is representative, so the problem I’ll raise for it will apply to other versions of Retributivism. His insights about justification also help to make the problem particularly obvious. I’ll also show how the problem extends to non-retributive (...) justifications of punishment. I’ll argue that Berman’s argument makes a questionable assumption about the standard of justification that justifications of punishment must meet to be successful. If we think about what it takes to justify punishment and reflect on the intuitions that retributivists appeal to, it turns out that the intuitions aren’t obviously up to the task. (shrink)

According to deterrence justifications of legal punishment, legal punishment is justified at least in part because it deters offenses. These justifications rely on important empirical assumptions, e.g., that non-punitive enforcement can't deter or that it can't deter enough. I’ll challenge these assumptions and argue that extant deterrence justifications of legal punishment fail. In the process, I examine contemporary deterrence research and argue that it provides no support for these justifications.

People with disabilities often report enjoying a much higher quality of life than people without disabilities would expect. For instance, many people believe that their lives would be much worse if they were to become paraplegic. Indeed, some people believe that life with paraplegia would be barely worth living. Yet many paraplegics report being roughly as happy as able-bodied people. This conflict in attitudes has come to be known as “the disability paradox.” Many psychologists claim that the disability paradox is (...) at least partly explained by affective forecasting errors. Someone makes an affective forecasting error when she makes a mistaken prediction about the effect of some event on her experiential quality of life. Such affective forecasting errors raise moral problems that are especially pressing in the context of medical decision-making. For instance, when a recommended treatment would leave someone disabled, she may refuse on the grounds that she would rather live a shorter life without the disability than a longer life with the disability. Yet it may be that she would feel very differently after adapting to the condition in question. What should we say about such cases? On the one hand, some ethicists have argued that affective forecasting errors compromise autonomy, so that decision-makers should take account of the likelihood that they will adapt. On the other, it may appear that decision-makers should have no regard for adaptive preferences they may form in the future. My central goal in this paper is to argue that both of these views are mistaken. If sound, my arguments suggest that legitimate moral concerns about a subject’s well-being are sometimes misrepresented as concerns about her autonomy. (shrink)

Some philosophers defend legal punishment by appealing to a natural right to punish wrongdoers, a right people would have in a state of nature. Many of these philosophers argue that legal punishment can be justified by transferring this right to the state. I’ll argue that such a right may not be transferrable to the state because such a right may not survive the transition out of anarchy. A compelling reason for the natural right claim – that in a state of (...) nature there are few if any viable non-punitive enforcement options – isn’t obviously true in state contexts. (shrink)