Transitional justice scholars are increasingly concerned with measuring the impact of transitional justice initiatives. Scholars often assume that TJ mechanisms must be properly designed and ordered to achieve lasting effect, but the impact of TJ timing and sequencing has attracted relatively little theoretical or empirical attention. Focusing on Latin America, this article explores variation within the region as to when TJ occurs and the order in which mechanisms are implemented. We utilize qualitative comparative analysis to assess the impact of TJ (...) timing and sequencing on democratic development. We find little evidence for path dependency owing to the chronological order of mechanisms. We do find, however, that amnesties and trials approach a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation in Latin America; trials, however, come closest to being a necessary condition for successful democratic consolidation. (shrink)

In recent years, countries have begun to establish ministries of transitional justice as part of political transitions from authoritarianism to democracy or from conflict to peace. This may reflect a broader historical trend in the administration of TJ, which has evolved from isolated offices within a particular ministry to ad hoc cross-ministry coordinating bodies to the establishment of dedicated ministries. The reasons for the establishment of specific ministries to pursue TJ, what we call ministerialization, have not attracted scholarly attention. This (...) article explores the causes and likely consequences of this development. In particular, it applies international relations, comparative politics, and public policy theories to explain the phenomenon. Contrary to some TJ literature that is concerned about hegemonic transnational discourse, international actors have played little to no role in shaping how TJ is bureaucratically managed. Rather, based upon fieldwork in Solomon Islands and Tunisia, the article concludes that ministerialization has been the result of domestic policy entrepreneurship. For TJ ministries to become a norm, however, more transnational actors will need to be convinced of the benefits of such an institutional arrangement. (shrink)

Can large language models produce expert‐quality philosophical texts? To investigate this, we fine‐tuned GPT‐3 with the works of philosopher Daniel Dennett. To evaluate the model, we asked the real Dennett 10 philosophical questions and then posed the same questions to the language model, collecting four responses for each question without cherry‐picking. Experts on Dennett's work succeeded at distinguishing the Dennett‐generated and machine‐generated answers above chance but substantially short of our expectations. Philosophy blog readers performed similarly to the experts, while ordinary (...) research participants were near chance distinguishing GPT‐3's responses from those of an “actual human philosopher”. (shrink)

Arguments from disagreement against moral realism begin by calling attention to widespread, fundamental moral disagreement among a certain group of people. Then, some skeptical or anti-realist-friendly conclusion is drawn. Chapter 2 proposes that arguments from disagreement share a structure that makes them vulnerable to a single, powerful objection: they self-undermine. For each formulation of the argument from disagreement, at least one of its premises casts doubt either on itself or on one of the other premises. On reflection, this shouldn’t be (...) surprising. These arguments are intended to support very strong metaphysical or epistemological conclusions about morality. They must therefore employ very strong metaphysical or epistemological premises. But, given the pervasiveness of disagreement in philosophy, especially about metaphysics and epistemology, very strong premises are virtually certain to be the subject of widespread, intractable disagreement—precisely the sort of disagreement that proponents of these arguments think undermine moral claims. Thus, these arguments undermine their own premises. If Chapter 2’s argument is sound, it provides realists with a single, unified strategy for responding to any existing or forthcoming arguments from disagreement. (shrink)

Adam Smith was a famous economist and moral philosopher. This book treats Smith also as a systematic philosopher with a distinct epistemology, an original theory of the passions, and a surprising philosophy mind. The book argues that there is a close, moral connection between Smith's systematic thought and his policy recommendations.

The Moral Foundations of Trust seeks to explain why people place their faith in strangers, and why doing so matters. Trust is a moral value that does not depend upon personal experience or on interacting with people in civic groups or informal socializing. Instead, we learn to trust from our parents, and trust is stable over long periods of time. Trust depends on an optimistic world view: the world is a good place and we can make it better. Trusting people (...) are more likely to give through charity and volunteering. Trusting societies are more likely to redistribute resources from the rich to the poor. Trust has been in decline in the United States for over 30 years. The roots of this decline are traceable to declining optimism and increasing economic inequality, which Uslaner supports by aggregate time series in the United States and cross-sectional data across market economies. (shrink)

This paper explains Sophie de Grouchy’s philosophical debts to Adam Smith. I have three main reasons for this: first, it should explain why eighteenth-century philosophical feminists found Smith, who has—to put it mildly—not been a focus of much recent feminist admiration, a congenial starting point for their own thinking; second, it illuminates De Grouchy’s considerable philosophical originality, especially her important, overlooked contributions to political theory; third, it is designed to remove some unfortunate misconceptions that have found their way into Karin (...) Brown’s ‘Introduction’ to the recent and much-to-be-welcomed translation of Sophie de Grouchy’s Lettres Sur La Sympathie. While Brown claims that there are major ‘differences’ in their programs of ‘social reform’, I argue there are important commonalities between Smith and De Grouchy. In particular, I highlight how they share a common understanding of how human sensibilities are shaped by social institutions and I show that De Grouchy’s path-breaking analysis of negative and positive liberty is grounded in her extension of Smith’s political theory and moral psychology. (shrink)

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

Do philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave, on average, any morally better than do other professors? If not, do they at least behave more consistently with their expressed values? These questions have never been systematically studied. We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to (...) student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues, we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with the self-reports. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show unequivocally better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation. We discuss implications for several models of the relationship between philosophical reflection and real-world moral behavior. (shrink)

According to the analysis of concessive conditionals suggested by Crupi and Iacona, a concessive conditional \(p{{\,\mathrm{\hookrightarrow }\,}}q\) is adequately formalized as a conjunction of conditionals. This paper presents a sound and complete axiomatic system for concessive conditionals so understood. The soundness and completeness proofs that will be provided rely on a method that has been employed by Raidl, Iacona, and Crupi to prove the soundness and completeness of an analogous system for evidential conditionals.

One of the deepest and longest-lasting debates in ethics concerns a version of the Euthyphro question: are choiceworthy things choiceworthy because agents have certain attitudes toward them or are they choiceworthy independent of any agents’ attitudes? Reasons internalists, such as Bernard Williams, Michael Smith, Mark Schroeder, Sharon Street, Kate Manne, Julia Markovits, and David Sobel answer in the first way. They think that all of an agent’s normative reasons for action are grounded in facts about that agent’s pro-attitudes (e.g., her (...) desires, valuing states, normative judgments). According to the most popular brand of internalism, idealizing internalism, an agent’s reasons are grounded, not in her actual pro-attitudes, but rather in what her pro-attitudes would be in suitably idealized conditions. Idealizing internalists presuppose that, for any agent with an irrational set of attitudes, there is one uniquely rational set that that agent would have if she were to undergo the relevant idealizing process. I argue that this assumption is false and that it raises two puzzles for idealizing internalism: one about the existence of practical reasons and another about their normative weight. I argue that idealizing internalists have an adequate solution to the first puzzle but not the second. Indeed, when they try to solve the second puzzle, they confront a dilemma. This second puzzle and the associated dilemma thus constitutes a powerful, but so far unnoticed, difficulty for idealizing internalism. (shrink)

Foundational theories of mental content seek to identify the conditions under which a mental representation expresses, in the mind of a particular thinker, a particular content. Normativists endorse the following general sort of foundational theory of mental content: A mental representation r expresses concept C for agent S just in case S ought to use r in conformity with some particular pattern of use associated with C. In response to Normativist theories of content, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Åsa Wikforss propose a (...) dilemma, alleging that Normativism either entails a vicious regress or falls prey to a charge of idleness. In this paper, I respond to this argument. I argue that Normativism can avoid the commitments that generate the regress and does not propose the sort of explanation required to charge that its explanation has been shown to be problematically idle. The regress-generating commitment to be avoided is, roughly, that tokened, contentful mental states are the product of rule-following. The explanatory task Normativists should disavow is that of explaining how it is that beliefs and other contentful mental states are produced. I argue that Normativism, properly understood as a theory of content, does not provide this kind of psychological explanation, and therefore does not entail that such explanations are to be given in terms of rule-following. If this is correct, Normativism is not the proper target of the dilemma offered by Glüer-Pagin and Wikforss. Understanding why one might construe Normativism in the way Glüer-Pagin and Wikforss must, and how, properly understood, it avoids their dilemma, can help us to appreciate the attractiveness of a genuinely normative theory of content and the importance of paying careful attention to the sort of normativity involved in norm-based theories of content. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

The core of this book is a novel theory of distributive justice premised on the fundamental moral equality of persons. In the light of this theory, Rakowski considers three types of problems which urgently require solutions-- the distribution of resources, property rights, and the saving of life--and provides challenging and unconventional answers. Further, he criticizes the economic analysis of law as a normative theory, and develops an alternative account of tort and property law.

I argue that Smith proposed a new kind of imperialism, which we would describe as a species of ‘federalism,’ and that his plan influenced Bentham and Kant in their federal projects, although they seem to have been unaware of each other’s proposals. In what follows, I outline Smith’s position. I then describe Kant’s and Bentham’s debts to Smith in turn. This will also allow for greater clarity about the nature of early liberalism.

As an atheist, Dawkins strives to develop a scientific alternative to theism, and while he declares that science is not a religion, he also proclaims it to be a spiritual enterprise. His books are filled with fragmentary sketches of this "spiritual atheism", resembling a great unfinished cathedral. This book systematizes and completes Dawkins' arguments, and reveals their deep roots in Stoicism and Platonism. Expanding on Dawkins' ideas, Steinhart shows how atheists can develop powerful ethical principles, compelling systems of symbols and (...) images, and meaningful personal and social practices. Believing in Dawkins is a rigorous and potent entreaty for the use of science and reason to support spiritually rich and optimistic ways of thinking and living. (shrink)

Christian realism is undergoing a renaissance in both American Christianity and around the world. Caught between globalist liberalism, on the one hand, and pragmatic realism on the other, Christians are in search of international ethics, a standard and tradition in foreign policy, that takes the two great books of life, the Christian Scriptures and the world we live in, seriously. This book is an extended, edited collection that mines the tradition of Christian realism in international relations and finds in it (...) voices and mentors urgently fresh for a new age. With classic authors like Reinhold Niebuhr, Herbert Butterfield, Paul Ramsey, and Jean Bethke Elshtain, and contemporaries like Marc LiVecche, Rebecca Heinrichs, and others, this collection offers for the first time an organization, periodization, and collection of primary Christian realist sources for the initiate and the expert in foreign relations."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Nos sociétés tendent spontanément vers un compromis social-démocrate, entre liberté totale et contrainte sociale, entre individualisme et solidarisme. Bizarrement, les forces politiques porteuses de ce projet sont plutôt en recul, ne parviennent plus à conquérir les peuples, les opinions, le pouvoir. Le projet de ce livre est de montrer que des éléments essentiels de cette idéologie réformiste et socialiste peuvent être trouvés chez Auguste Comte.

In this article I examine several related views expressed by Robin Hendry concerning molecular structure, emergence and chemical bonding. There is a long-standing problem in the philosophy of chemistry arising from the fact that molecular structure cannot be strictly derived from quantum mechanics. Two or more compounds which share a molecular formula, but which differ with respect to their structures, have identical Hamiltonian operators within the quantum mechanical formalism. As a consequence, the properties of all such isomers yield precisely the (...) same calculated quantities such as their energies, dipole moments etc. The only means through which the difference between the isomers can be recovered is to build their structures into the quantum mechanical calculations, something that is carried out by the application of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Consequently, it has been argued by many authors that molecular structure is written in ‘by hand’ rather than derived. Robin Hendry is one such author, but he goes a great deal further by proposing that this situation implies the existence of emergence and downward causation. In the current article I argue that there are alternative explanations which render emergence and downward causation redundant. Such an alternative lies in the notion of quantum decoherence and the appeal to work in the foundations of physics, which posits that the various isomers exist as a superposition until their wavefunctions are collapsed either by observation or by interacting with their environment. Hendry also alludes to a debate among chemists as to whether chemical bonds are real or not, in the sense of directional connections between two or more nuclei in any given molecule. I reject this view and propose that the structural and energetic views of chemical bonding, that have been discussed by some philosophers of chemistry including Hendry, do not refer to any essential ontological differences. I agree that chemists view bonding in a more realistic fashion and may consider bonds to be in some senses real, while physicists may consider bonding in more abstract energetic terms. However, I do not believe that such differences in scientific practice and attitudes should be considered to offer a window as to the ontological status of bonding or whether bonding is real. Finally, I discuss the kinetic energy school of chemical bonding which would seem to challenge any notion of bonds as directional entities, since bonding is no longer regarded as being primarily due to the build-up of electron density between nuclei. (shrink)

This chapter explores Nagel’s polemics. It shows these have a two-fold character: (i) to defend liberal civilization against all kinds of enemies. And (ii) to defend what he calls ‘contextual naturalism.’ And the chapter shows that (i-ii) reinforce each other and undermine alternative political and philosophical programs. The chapter’s argument responds to an influential argument by George Reisch that Nagel’s professional stance represents a kind of disciplinary retreat from politics. In order to respond to Reisch the relationship between Nagel’s philosophy (...) of science and his politics is explored and this chapter shows how both are anchored in what Nagel once called his ‘contextual naturalism’—a metaphysics that resists imposing the unity of the world and treats all entities as embedded in a wider network of entities. Part of the argument traces out how Nagel’s views on responsible speech and professionalism reflect a distinct understanding of the political role of philosophers of science. (shrink)

“Everyday ethics” is a term that has been used in the clinical and ethics literature for decades to designate normatively important and pervasive issues in healthcare. In spite of its importance, the term has not been reviewed and analyzed carefully. We undertook a literature review to understand how the term has been employed and defined, finding that it is often contrasted to “dramatic ethics.” We identified the core attributes most commonly associated with everyday ethics. We then propose an integrative model (...) of everyday ethics that builds on the contribution of different ethical theories. This model proposes that the function of everyday ethics is to serve as an integrative concept that (1) helps to detect current blind spots in bioethics (that is, shifts the focus from dramatic ethics) and (2) mobilizes moral agents to address these shortcomings of ethical insight. This novel integrative model has theoretical, methodological, practical, and pedagogical implications, which we explore. Because of the pivotal role that moral experience plays in this integrative model, the model could help to bridge empirical ethics research with more conceptual and normative work. (shrink)

The case is presented for a dilemmatic perspective to the educational provision for pupils and students with difficulties and disabilities. This perspective recognises the links and tensions between social and individual values and models. The paper focuses on the central significance of dilemmas of difference in understanding policy and practice issues in the field. One of the central arguments is that a commitment to inclusion implies a commitment to meeting the needs of a minority and therefore to arrangements which may (...) not be required by the majority. Inclusion is about mainstream schools accommodating a full diversity, and in doing so leads inevitably to adopting dedicated or specialised support systems for some. The paper provides an overview of recent changes in policy and practice as well as looking at possible future trends. An inter-disciplinary model which connects individual and social perspectives is proposed both for explanatory purposes and for designing provision in terms of the interaction between the inclusivity of the system and responding to additional individual needs. (shrink)

There are many alleged problems with trusting another person’s moral testimony, perhaps the most prominent of which is that it fails to deliver moral understanding. Without moral understanding, one cannot do the right thing for the right reason, and so acting on trusted moral testimony lacks moral worth. This chapter, however, argues that moral advice differs from moral testimony, differs from it in a way that enables a defender of moral advice to parry this worry about moral worth. The basic (...) idea is that an advisor and an advisee can together constitute a joint agent, and that this joint agent’s action can indeed have moral worth. So while the advisee himself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone he lacks the right reason), and while the advisor herself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone she does not do the right thing), they together do the right for the right reason. (shrink)

Here I consider the two most venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Obviously, both arguments cannot be sound. But I argue here that they are (...) both unsound for the very same reason. (shrink)

Remembrance of Things Past In 1943 I had arrived at a dead-end in my attempts to find a theory of man, society, and history that would permit an adequate ...

This paper reports on part of an evaluation of teacher support teams as a special education needs support strategy in primary schools. Using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, it focuses on areas derived from a theoretical framework for understanding schools’ approaches to SENs. TSTs were set up and run in six of the eight schools, with meetings of between 30 and 45 minutes, usually during lunchtime or after school. Most of the referrals were about behaviour problems, though (...) many were about learning difficulties. The support included providing emotional encouragement, specific approaches to managing behaviour, teaching strategies and consulting others. Referring teachers reported that their TST experience led to increased confidence and some improvements in the children, while TST members themselves believed that they had gained much from the TST experience. Overall the study showed the feasibility and benefits of setting up TSTs in primary schools. The findings are discussed in terms of the wider benefits of TSTs and their relevance to special needs policies and the implementation of the SENs code of practice. (shrink)

Philosophy of science and history of science both have a significant relation to science itself; but what is their relation to each other? That question has been a focal point of philosophical and historical work throughout the second half of this century. An analysis and review of the progress made in dealing with this question, and especially that made in philosophy, is the focus of this thesis. Chapter one concerns logical positivist and empiricist approaches to philosophy of science, and the (...) significance of the criticisms levelled at them by analytic epistemologists such as Willard Quine and 'historicist' philosophers, especially Thomas Kuhn. Chapter two details the attempts by Kuhn and Lakatos to integrate these historicist criticisms with historically oriented philosophy of science, in their separate attempts at providing rational explanations of historical developments. Kuhn's latest work seeks to mend fences with philosophy, but his efforts remain too closely tied to the epistemological approaches strongly criticized in his earlier work. Lakatos' treatment of history is much more subtle than most have understood it to be, but the conception of scientific rationality that arises out of it is transformed into an abstract cultural product, more reminiscent of Hegel's geist than of individual human rationality. Chapters three and four discuss the recommendations of Lakatos and Laudan to historians with regard to historiography, and the actual historiographies and philosophy of history of practicing historians and historians of science. The philosophers' contributions indicate little concern for the historians' own methods, materials, and purposes; and the historians' writings present methodologies for history of science that are independent of the normative demarcations of philosophy of science, pace Lakatos and Laudan. Chapter five develops a philosophical position that fosters a more productive engagement between philosophy and history of science, a 'methodological historicism' that embraces the possibility of an important role for social and political factors in a philosophical study of scientific development. The epistemological relativism that might accompany such a historicist position need not be the radical epistemological anarchism of Feyerabend, though it will allow for a significant underdetermination of scientific development by reason nonetheless. (shrink)

In this article I examine several related views expressed by Robin Hendry concerning molecular structure, emergence and chemical bonding. There is a long-standing problem in the philosophy of chemistry arising from the fact that molecular structure cannot be strictly derived from quantum mechanics. Two or more compounds which share a molecular formula, but which differ with respect to their structures, have identical Hamiltonian operators within the quantum mechanical formalism. As a consequence, the properties of all such isomers yield precisely the (...) same calculated quantities such as their energies, dipole moments etc. The only means through which the difference between the isomers can be recovered is to build their structures into the quantum mechanical calculations, something that is carried out by the application of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Consequently, it has been argued by many authors that molecular structure is written in ‘by hand’ rather than derived. Robin Hendry is one such author, but he goes a great deal further by proposing that this situation implies the existence of emergence and downward causation. In the current article I argue that there are alternative explanations which render emergence and downward causation redundant. Such an alternative lies in the notion of quantum decoherence and the appeal to work in the foundations of physics, which posits that the various isomers exist as a superposition until their wavefunctions are collapsed either by observation or by interacting with their environment.Hendry also alludes to a debate among chemists as to whether chemical bonds are real or not, in the sense of directional connections between two or more nuclei in any given molecule. I reject this view and propose that the structural and energetic views of chemical bonding, that have been discussed by some philosophers of chemistry including Hendry, do not refer to any essential ontological differences. I agree that chemists view bonding in a more realistic fashion and may consider bonds to be in some senses real, while physicists may consider bonding in more abstract energetic terms. However, I do not believe that such differences in scientific practice and attitudes should be considered to offer a window as to the ontological status of bonding or whether bonding is real. Finally, I discuss the kinetic energy school of chemical bonding which would seem to challenge any notion of bonds as directional entities, since bonding is no longer regarded as being primarily due to the build-up of electron density between nuclei. (shrink)

Digitalists base their thoughts about reality on concepts taken from the sciences of information and computation. For digitalists, these sciences are prior to the physical sciences. Digitalists emphatically reject substance metaphysics. They are neither materialists nor idealists nor dualists. They have their own novel definitions of bodies, minds, lives, and souls. They talk about digital universes running on digital gods, and they regard nature as a recursively self-improving system of computations. They endorse digitized theories of resurrection and reincarnation. But they (...) also argue for deeper and more mathematical approaches to life after death. All these digital ideas are naturalistic. They are consistent with our best sciences. (shrink)

There are multiple formal characterizations of the natural numbers available. Despite being inter-derivable, they plausibly codify different possible applications of the naturals – doing basic arithmetic, counting, and ordering – as well as different philosophical conceptions of those numbers: structuralist, cardinal, and ordinal. Nevertheless, some influential philosophers of mathematics have argued for a non-egalitarian attitude according to which one of those characterizations is more “legitmate” in virtue of being “more basic” or “more fundamental”. This paper addresses two related issues. First, (...) we review some of these non-egalitarian arguments, lay out a laundry list of different, legitimate, notions of relative priority, and suggest that these arguments plausibly employ different such notions. Secondly, we argue that given a metaphysical-cum-epistemological gloss suggested by Frege’s foundationalist epistomology, the ordinals are plausibly more basic than the cardinals. This is just one orientation to relative priority one could take, however. Ultimately, we subscribe to an egalitarian attitude towards these formal characterizations: they are, in some sense, equally “legitimate”. (shrink)

This paper argues that under some conditions, when one person acts on the direction of another person, the two of them thereby act together, and that this explains why both the director and the directee can be responsible for what is done. In other words, a director and a directee can be a joint agent, one whose members are responsible for what they together do. This is most clearly so when the directive is a command. But it is also sometimes (...) so when the directive is a bit of advice. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline and critically evaluate Thomas Hofweber’s solution to a semantic puzzle he calls Frege’s Other Puzzle. After sketching the Puzzle and two traditional responses to it—the Substantival Strategy and the Adjectival Strategy—we outline Hofweber’s proposed version of Adjectivalism. We argue that two key components—the syntactic and semantic components—of Hofweber’s analysis both suffer from serious empirical difficulties. Ultimately, this suggests that an altogether different solution to Frege’s Other Puzzle is required.

No citizen should be denied the right to vote due solely to her age. We can see this by showing that all objections to it fail. It might be objected that it is not unjust to so deprive children because children as a group are unintelligent or irrational, have their interests already represented by the parents, or are justly deprived of many other rights, among other reasons. But all these objections fail because there is no evidence to support it, even (...) if true, this would not justify disenfranchisement, or, most prominently argued here, they deprive individuals of political rights based upon their membership in a group. The voting age should be abolished. (shrink)

Is it possible to really give a gift? This may, at first glance, seem like a peripheral question for philosophy, which normally directs its attention to seemingly bigger questions. The dynamics of the gift move into philosophy from anthropology and sociology, but Jacques Derrida insists that this question belongs at the heart of philosophy. This volume takes up Derrida's challenge to invest in the question of a gift, and the relationship between gift and economy. The powerful and corruptive forces of (...) economy can wreak havoc on every effort to give or receive a pure gift. Each of the essays investigates some aspect of the gift, and the way economics relate to the sheer hospitality and generosity implied in the idea of giving. Is there a blessed economy? Must economics always operate in a sinister and exploitive fashion? What can be learned by the philosophical investigations related to this concept? There is something about the event or idea of the gift that cannot be entirely explained by the machinations of economy. In the giving of a gift something happens, if only unpredictably and rarely, that cannot be explained by the calculus that tracks the exchange of money, property, goods, debt and power. This excess that confounds the reduction of the gift to the dynamics of power and exchange is a source of creative fascination for a wide range of philosophers, including the collection of scholars who have contributed to this book. (shrink)

This book offers a state-of-the-art introduction to the basic techniques and results of neighborhood semantics for modal logic. In addition to presenting the relevant technical background, it highlights both the pitfalls and potential uses of neighborhood models – an interesting class of mathematical structures that were originally introduced to provide a semantics for weak systems of modal logic. In addition, the book discusses a broad range of topics, including standard modal logic results ; bisimulations for neighborhood models and other model-theoretic (...) constructions; comparisons with other semantics for modal logic ; neighborhood semantics for first-order modal logic, applications in game theory ; applications in epistemic logic ; and non-normal modal logics with dynamic modalities. The book can be used as the primary text for seminars on philosophical logic focused on non-normal modal logics; as a supplemental text for courses on modal logic, logic in AI, or philosophical logic ; or as the primary source for researchers interested in learning about the uses of neighborhood semantics in philosophical logic and game theory. (shrink)

This paper argues that the classification of propositional attitudes into the de re, de dicto, and de se is incomplete. De se attitudes are widely agreed to be closely connected to de re attitudes. But there is a species of belief that is linked to agent-centered action in the way that de se beliefs are, but is also associated with entities, places, and especially times, under a description. These mark out a fourth kind. One way to think about what makes (...) them distinctive is that, despite being ‘essentially indexical’ they can be retained across different contexts of evaluation without having diagonal content. The paper also discusses the connection between such beliefs and the kinds of utterances (like ‘Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today’) that are contested as examples of what David Kaplan called ‘monsters.’. (shrink)

We aim to do two things in this article. On the positive end, our goal is to explain how some seemingly incompatible aspects of belief live together, by presenting distinct mechanistic explanations of each of them: in particular we want to show how belief can be discerning, credulous, rational, and irrational. After clarifying our positive view, we take aim at some competitor views in the second half of the paper, particularly offering critiques of epistemic vigilance and social marketplace accounts of (...) belief. We conclude by inviting proponents to provide an architecture for belief that can be tested against existing models. (shrink)

William Lawrence Tower’s work on the evolution of the Colorado Potato Beetle (_Leptinotarsa decemlineata_), documenting the environmental induction of mutation and speciation, made him a leading figure in experimental genetics during the first decade of the 20th century. His research program served as a model for other experimental evolution studies seeking to demonstrate the environmental modification of inheritance. Tower enjoyed the support of influential figures in the field, despite well-known problems that plagued Tower’s earlier academic career. The validity of his (...) genetic work, and other findings reported by Tower, were later challenged. The Tower affair illustrates how questionable and possibly fraudulent scientific practices can be tolerated to explore certain experimental directions and theoretical frameworks, particularly at the frontier of expanding disciplines. When needed, those explorations can be forestalled or extinguished by exploiting conspicuous vulnerabilities of rogue practitioners. In Tower’s case, both unrefuted allegations of scientific misconduct and personal problems dissolved his institutional support, leading to a swift ouster from academic science. Tower’s downfall discredited soft inheritance and neo-Lamarckian conceptions in the field of experimental genetics, facilitating the discipline’s embrace of a hard inheritance model that featured a hereditary material resistant to environmental modification. (shrink)

In this article, Severson explores the insights of Emmanuel Levinas regarding theodicy and the problem of evil. Levinas considers philosophical and practical justifications of suffering to be blasphemous, violating the sanctity of the suffering of the other person, even when well-meant. Severson introduces distinctions between “pain” and “suffering” to extrapolate and explain Levinas’s striking rejection of theodicy.

This Element introduces the philosophical literature on models, with an emphasis on normative considerations relevant to models for decision-making. Chapter 1 gives an overview of core questions in the philosophy of modeling. Chapter 2 examines the concept of model adequacy for purpose, using three examples of models from the atmospheric sciences to describe how this sort of adequacy is determined in practice. Chapter 3 explores the significance of using models that are not adequate for purpose, including the purpose of informing (...) public decisions. Chapter 4 provides a basic framework for values in modelling, using a case study to highlight the ethical challenges in building models for decision making. It concludes by establishing the need for strategies to manage value judgments in modelling, including the potential for public participation in the process. (shrink)

The five articles selected for this issue of Religious Studies Archives develop a non-theistic approach to religion and spirituality that can be called Platonic atheism. Platonic atheism emerges as these five articles are set into place and put into dialog with each other. One of the central figures of Platonic atheism is Iris Murdoch, whose work deserves to be revived and studied very carefully by contemporary philosophers of religion. Platonic atheism is an alternative to Christian theism. And while it may (...) be considered as a kind of naturalism, it differs from the scientism found in much contemporary atheism. Strands of Platonic atheism are interwoven into many articles in Religious Studies, from its beginning to the present. (shrink)