We believe that the task goal in voluntary movements provides meaning to existing information sources in the environment and determines, in a dynamic way, the use and relative importance of these different sources. This task-centered meaning bridges the apparent controversy between what information is available in principle (i.e., specification), and what information is perceived.

Milner and Goodale have advanced a justly influential theory of the structure of the human visual system. In broad outline, Milner and Goodale hold that the ventral neural pathway is associated with recognition and experiential awareness, and with a kind of indirect control of action. And they hold that, by contrast, the dorsal neural stream is associated with the non-conscious, direct control of visually informed action. Most of the relevant empirical research has focused on the visual control of close-in, “personal (...) space,” reaching and/or grasping. While their view has not escaped controversy and debate, we think that Milner and Goodale have a compelling story to tell about the visual guidance of such close in, “personal space” action. However, the question of whether their scheme applies to behavior with visually specified targets that are outside of the space accessible by simply reaching and grasping is largely unstudied. And it should be studied, since this is the arena of much human behavior. We provide good reason to think that the Milner and Goodale scheme may well not apply to important classes of mid-range, ‘action space’ behavior. But the matter is in the end to be decided in the lab. We describe a research program to do this. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle’s famous 'sea-battle' passages in On Interpretation 9, some substantial minority of philosophers has been attracted to the doctrine of the open future--the doctrine that future contingent statements are not true. But, prima facie, such views seem inconsistent with the following intuition: if something has happened, then (looking back) it was the case that it would happen. How can it be that, looking forwards, it isn’t true that there will be a sea battle, while also being true (...) that, looking backwards, it was the case that there would be a sea battle? This tension forms, in large part, what might be called the problem of future contingents. A dominant trend in temporal logic and semantic theorizing about future contingents seeks to validate both intuitions. Theorists in this tradition--including some interpretations of Aristotle, but paradigmatically, Thomason (1970), as well as more recent developments in Belnap, et. al (2001) and MacFarlane (2003, 2014)--have argued that the apparent tension between the intuitions is in fact merely apparent. In short, such theorists seek to maintain both of the following two theses: (i) the open future: Future contingents are not true, and (ii) retro-closure: From the fact that something is true, it follows that it was the case that it would be true. It is well-known that reflection on the problem of future contingents has in many ways been inspired by importantly parallel issues regarding divine foreknowledge and indeterminism. In this paper, we take up this perspective, and ask what accepting both the open future and retro-closure predicts about omniscience. When we theorize about a perfect knower, we are theorizing about what an ideal agent ought to believe. Our contention is that there isn’t an acceptable view of ideally rational belief given the assumptions of the open future and retro-closure, and thus this casts doubt on the conjunction of those assumptions. (shrink)

This book launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future. Patrick Todd argues that all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false.

It is widely accepted that there is what has been called a non-hypocrisy norm on the appropriateness of moral blame; roughly, one has standing to blame only if one is not guilty of the very offence one seeks to criticize. Our acceptance of this norm is embodied in the common retort to criticism, “Who are you to blame me?”. But there is a paradox lurking behind this commonplace norm. If it is always inappropriate for x to blame y for a (...) wrong that x has committed, then all cases in which x blames x (i.e. cases of self-blame) are rendered inappropriate. But it seems to be ethical common-sense that we are often, sadly, in position (indeed, excellent, privileged position) to blame ourselves for our own moral failings. And thus we have a paradox: a conflict between the inappropriateness of hypocritical blame, and the appropriateness of self-blame. We consider several ways of resolving the paradox, and contend none is as defensible as a position that simply accepts it: we should never blame ourselves. In defending this startling position, we defend a crucial distinction between self-blame and guilt. (shrink)

Incompatibilism about responsibility and determinism is sometimes directly construed as the thesis that if we found out that determinism is true, we would have to give up the reactive attitudes. Call this "the consequence". I argue that this is a mistake: the strict modal thesis does not entail the consequence. First, some incompatibilists (who are also libertarians) may be what we might call *resolute responsibility theorists* (or "flip-floppers"). On this view, if we found out that determinism is true, this would (...) not be to find out that no one is responsible; instead, what this would suggest is that incompatibilism is after all false. Second, some incompatibilists may instead deny the claim that if we found out that no one deserves the reactiveattitudes, we would have to give up the reactive attitudes. Call this position *innocent incompatibilism*. I explore several different reasons why the fact that no one deserves the reactive attitudes likely does not translate into a requirement for us to give up the reactive attitudes. The upshot: incompatibilism may be practically irrelevant, even if true. (shrink)

I want to suggest that it would be bad if compatibilism were true, and that this gives us good reason to think that it isn't. This is, you might think, an outlandish argument, and the considerable burden of this paper is to convince you otherwise. There are two key elements at stake in this argument. The first is that it would be ‐ in a distinctive sense to be explained ‐ bad if compatibilism were true. The thought here is that (...) compatibilism ultimately presents us with a picture on which, in principle, powerful manipulators can effectively guarantee that finite moral agents should become blameworthy. To my mind, this isn't just false ‐ though I think that it is ‐ it is also such that it would be bad (unfortunate, undesirable…) if it were true. The second is that the fact that it would be ‐ in this sense ‐ bad if true gives us reason to think that it isn't. It may be bad that there is no afterlife. But that, in itself, hardly gives us reason to think that there is an afterlife. That is true, but ‐ as others before me have suggested ‐ when the object of the relevant badness is morality itself, the inference seems secure. A more general aim of the paper is to investigate the nature of this very form of argument in itself, and I compare my argument (inter alia) to a recent argument from Sayre–McCord against the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas. (shrink)

In this paper, we clarify, unpack, and ultimately resist what is perhaps the most prominent argument for the compatibility of free will and determinism: the epistemic argument for compatibilism. We focus on one such argument as articulated by David Lewis: (i) we know we are free, (ii) for all we know everything is predetermined, (iii) if we know we are free but for all we know everything is predetermined, then for all we know we are free but everything is predetermined, (...) (iv) if for all we know we are free but predetermined, then it is really possible that we are, so (v) compatibilism. We uncover how the crucial epistemic modality underlying (iv) must be understood, and contend that, understood this way, the libertarian can resist (iv). Importantly, however, resisting the argument does commit the libertarian to what has been called “flip-flopping”—but we argue that this is perfectly coherent. We conclude by articulating two crucially ways the libertarian can resist the argument, by saying that we can know that determinism is false "from the armchair". (shrink)

As more and more multi-national companies expand their operations globally, their responsibilities extend beyond not only the economic motive of profitability but also other social and environmental factors. The objective of this article is to examine the impact of national culture and geographic environment on firms’ corporate social performance (CSP). Empirical tests are based on a global CSP database of companies from 49 countries. Results show that the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are significantly associated with CSP. In addition, European companies are (...) found to out-perform other regions and countries in CSP. (shrink)

Anyone familiar with the work of Friedrich Münzer knows that he possessed an unrivalled knowledge of the Roman aristocracy of the Republic. On the rare occasion when something escapes Münzer, it is apt to pass altogether unnoticed. The following is one such instance.

Veltman’s test semantics and developments thereof reject the canon about semantic contents and attitude ascriptions in favor of dynamic alternatives. According to these theories the semantic content of a sentence is not a proposition, but a context change potential (CCP). Similarly, beliefs are not taken to be relations between agents and propositions, but agents and CCPs. These deviations from the canon come at the cost of an elegant explanation about the correctness of belief. Standardly, it is taken that the content (...) of a belief is correct just in case the content of that belief is true. The proponent of the test semantics cannot appeal to this explanation since they hold that certain contents, namely epistemically modalized contents, do not express propositions, and are neither true nor false. After motivating the need for an account of the correctness of belief within the dynamic framework, I argue that the few extant accounts in the literature are unsatisfactory. A novel account is proposed that avoids the problems of competing views. (shrink)

This modern, advanced textbook reviews modal logic, a field which caught the attention of computer scientists in the late 1970's.

Coherent, well organized text familiarizes readers with complete theory of logical inference and its applications to math and the empirical sciences. Part I deals with formal principles of inference and definition; Part II explores elementary intuitive set theory, with separate chapters on sets, relations, and functions. Last section introduces numerous examples of axiomatically formulated theories in both discussion and exercises. Ideal for undergraduates; no background in math or philosophy required.

The required professional and ethical pronouncements of accountants mean that auditors need to be competent and exercise due care and skill in the performance of their audits. In this study, we examine what happens when auditors take on more clients than they should, thus raising doubts about their ability to maintain competence and audit quality. Using 2803 observations of Malaysian companies from 2010 to 2013, we find that auditors with multiple clients are associated with lower earnings quality, proxied by total (...) accruals and discretionary accruals. Our results demonstrate that associating client firms’ reported discretionary accruals with individual auditors, rather than their firms or offices, is important in determining audit quality. Moreover, we demonstrate that the disclosure of auditors’ signatures on their reports is useful for assessing auditor quality at the individual level, thus contributing to the debate on the usefulness of having auditor identities on reports. (shrink)

Among the many forms of research misconduct, publishing fraudulent data is considered to be serious where the confidence and validity of the research is detrimentally undermined. In this study, the trend of 303 retracted publications from 44 authors (with more than three retracted publications each) was analysed. The results showed that only 6.60% of the retracted publications were single-authored and the discovery of fraudulent publications had reduced from 52.24 months (those published before the year 2000) to 33.23 months (those published (...) on the year 2000 and onwards). It appears that with the widely accessible public databases like PubMed, fraudulent publications can be detected more easily. The different approaches adopted by authors who had previous publications retracted are also discussed herein. (shrink)

The environmental impacts of anthropogenic climate change, from an increase in global temperatures melting polar ice caps to the generation of extreme weather events, appear to be happening even mo...

In his book Democratic Authority, David Estlund puts forward a case for democracy, which he labels epistemic proceduralism, that relies on democracy's ability to produce good – that is, substantively just – results. Alongside this case for democracy Estlund attacks what he labels ‘utopophobia’, an aversion to idealistic political theory. In this article I make two points. The first is a general point about what the correct level of ‘idealisation’ is in political theory. Various debates are emerging on this question (...) and, to the extent that they are focused on ‘political theory’ as a whole, I argue, they are flawed. This is because there are different kinds of political concept, and they require different kinds of ideal. My second point is about democracy in particular. If we understand democracy as Estlund does, then we should see it as a problem-solving concept – the problem being that we need coercive institutions and rules, but we do not know what justice requires. As democracy is a response to a problem, we should not allow our theories of it, even at the ideal level, to be too idealised – they must be embedded in the nature of the problem they are to solve, and the beings that have it. (shrink)

This paper considers Norton’s Material Theory of Induction. The material theory aims inter alia to neutralize Hume’s Problem of Induction. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the material theory's capacity to achieve this end. After pulling apart two versions of the theory, I argue that neither version satisfactorily neutralizes the problem.

Respect for patient autonomy is paramount in resolving ethical tensions in end-of-life care. The concept of relational autonomy has contributed to this debate; however, scholars often use this concept in a fragmented manner. This leads to partial answers on ascertaining patients’ true wishes, meaningfully engaging patients’ significant others, balancing interests among patients and significant others, and determining clinicians’ obligations to change patients’ unconventional convictions to enhance patient autonomy. A satisfactory solution based on relational autonomy must incorporate patients’ competence (apart from (...) decisional capacity), authenticity (their true desires or beliefs) and the involvement level of their significant others. To that end, we argue that John Christman’s procedural approach to relational autonomy provides critical insights, such as the diachronic or socio-historical personhood, sustained critical reflection and his recent explication of the nature of asymmetrical relationships and helpful interlocutors. This study reviews Christman’s account, proposes minor modifications and advocates for an integrated three-dimensional model for medical decision-making. Clarifying the relationship among the three elements promotes an ethical framework with a coherent understanding of relational autonomy. This model not only provides a descriptive and normative framework for end-of-life care practice but also reconsiders the nature of the clinician–patient relationship and its normative implications. We further present a case study to illustrate the merits of our proposed model. Altogether, our proposal will help navigate complex medical decision-making, foster trust and negotiate shared values between patients and their significant others, particularly in end-of-life care. (shrink)

The authors present a comprehensive synthesis and evaluation of the published scales measuring the components of the decision making process in ethical situations using the Hunt-Vitell (1993) theory of ethics as a framework to guide the research. Suggestions for future scale development are also provided.

This paper extends the AGM theory of belief revision to accommodate infinitary belief change. We generalize both axiomatization and modeling of the AGM theory. We show that most properties of the AGM belief change operations are preserved by the generalized operations whereas the infinitary belief change operations have their special properties. We prove that the extended axiomatic system for the generalized belief change operators with a Limit Postulate properly specifies infinite belief change. This framework provides a basis for first-order belief (...) revision and the theory of revising a belief state by a belief state. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is permissible for computer scientists and engineers—working with advanced militaries that are making good faith efforts to follow the laws of war—to engage in the research and development of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Research and development into a new weapons system is permissible if and only if the new weapons system can plausibly generate a superior risk profile for all morally relevant classes and it is not intrinsically wrong. The paper then suggests that these conditions (...) are satisfied by at least some potential LAWS development programs. More specifically, since LAWS will lead to greater force protection, warfighters are free to become more risk-acceptant in protecting civilian lives and property. Further, various malicious motivations that lead to war crimes will not apply to LAWS or will apply to no greater extent than with human warfighters. Finally, intrinsic objections—such as the claims that LAWS violate human dignity or that it creates ‘responsibility gaps’—are rejected on the basis that they rely upon implausibly idealized and atomized understandings of human decision-making in combat. (shrink)

Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era provided the first introduction and analysis of contemporary concepts of curriculum development in relation to postmodernism. It challenged educators to transcend purely traditional approaches to curriculum development and instead incorporate various postmodern discourses into their reflection and action in schools. Since publication in 1995, the curriculum studies field has exploded, the very notion of the postmodern has shifted, and the landscape of American schooling has changed dramatically-federal policies like No Child Left Behind have dramatically (...) increased the focus on accountability and consequently what and how teachers teach. The need to understand curriculum in relation to global religions, ethnic relations, multicultural communities, and socio-political interest groups has been magnified. Controversial issues such as biology, gender roles, academic freedom, religion and prayer in schools, gay straight alliances, GLBT literature in the curriculumstudies is theorized. In this much-anticipated and thoroughly updated edition, noted curriculum studies scholar Patrick Slattery tackles these and other issues to reflect on the current state of curriculum development and on where the field may go from here. (shrink)

Possible-world semantics are provided for Parikh’s relevance-sensitive model for belief revision. Having Grove’s system-of-spheres construction as a base, we consider additional constraints on measuring distance between possible worlds, and we prove that, in the presence of the AGM postulates, these constraints characterize precisely Parikh’s axiom (P). These additional constraints essentially generalize a criterion of similarity that predates axiom (P) and was originally introduced in the context of Reasoning about Action. A by-product of our study is the identification of two possible (...) readings of Parikh’s axiom (P), which we call the strong and the weak versions of the axiom. An interesting feature of the strong version is that, unlike classical AGM belief revision, it makes associations between the revision policies of different theories. (shrink)

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, (...) biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene–culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music. (shrink)

Tens of thousands of students have learned to be more discerning at constructing and evaluating arguments with the help of Patrick J. Hurley. Hurley’s lucid, friendly, yet thorough presentation has made A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC the most widely used logic text in North America. In addition, the book’s accompanying technological resources, such as CengageNOW and Learning Logic, include interactive exercises as well as video and audio clips to reinforce what you read in the book and hear in class. (...) In short, you’ll have all the assistance you need to become a more logical thinker and communicator. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel, neo-republican account of just state surveillance in the information age. The goal of state surveillance should be to avoid and prevent domination, both public and private. In light of that conception of justice, the paper makes three substantive points. First, it argues that modern state surveillance based upon information technology and predicated upon a close partnership with the tech sector gives the state significant power and represents a serious potential source of domination. Second, it argues (...) that, nonetheless, state surveillance can serve legitimate republican ends and so unilateral and private technological attempts to block it may be wrongful. Third, it argues that, despite the serious normative failings of current institutions, state surveillance can be justly regulated and made accountable through a legal liability regime that incentivizes tech company intermediaries to ally with civil society groups in order to safeguard the privacy rights of potential subjects of state surveillance. (shrink)

One important task of metaphysics is to answer the question of what it is for an object to exist. The first part of this book offers a systematic reconstruction and critique of contemporary views on existence. The upshot of this part is that the contemporary debate has reached an impasse because none of the considered views is able to formulate a satisfactory answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The second part reconstructs Thomas Aquinas’s view on existence (esse) and argues that (...) it contributes a new perspective which allows us to see why the contemporary debate has reached this impasse. It has come to this point because it has taken a premise for granted which Aquinas’s view rejects, namely, that the existence of an object consists in something’s having a property. A decisive contribution of Aquinas’s theory of esse is that it makes use of the ideas of metaphysical participation and composition. In this way, it can be explained how an object can have esse without being the case that esse is a property of it. This book brings together a reconstruction from the history of philosophy with a systematic study on existence and is therefore relevant for scholars interested in contemporary or medieval theories of existence. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a new approach to address the ramification problem in common-sense reasoning about action and change. We contrast the methods of McCain and Turner, Thielscher and Sandewall and, based on some of the limitations they encounter, we introduce a trajectory-based approach which keeps a history of the states through which a system evolves to characterise its dynamical state. We furnish an underlying state-transition semantics and a logic that admits an expressive, dynamical account of some typical scenarios (...) which encounter modelling difficulties in the other approaches mentioned. (shrink)

The work on prototypes in ontologies pioneered by Rosch [10] and elaborated by Lakoff [8] and Freund [3] is related to vagueness in the sense that the more remote an instance is from a prototype the fewer people agree that it is an example of that prototype. An intuitive example is the prototypical “mother”, and it is observed that more specific instances like ”single mother”, “adoptive mother”, “surrogate mother”, etc., are less and less likely to be classified as “mothers” by (...) experimental subjects. From a different direction Gärdenfors [4] provided a persuasive account of natural predicates to resolve paradoxes of induction like Goodman’s “Grue” predicate [5]. Gärdenfors proposed that “quality dimensions” arising from human cognition and perception impose topologies on concepts such that the ones that appear “natural” to us are convex in these topologies. We show that these two cognitive principles — prototypes and predicate convexity — are equivalent to unimodal (convex) fuzzy characteristic functions for sets. Then we examine the case when the fuzzy set characteristic function is not convex, in particular when it is multi-modal. We argue that this is an indication that the fuzzy concept should really be regarded as a super concept in which the decomposed components are subconcepts in an ontological taxonomy. (shrink)

As well as disagreeing about how much one should donate to charity, moral theories also disagree about where one should donate. In light of this disagreement, how should the morally uncertain philanthropist allocate her donations? In many cases, one intuitively attractive option is for the philanthropist to split her donations across all of the charities that are recommended by moral views in which she has positive credence, with each charity’s share being proportional to her credence in the moral theories that (...) recommend that particular charity. Despite the fact that something like this approach is already being used by real-world philanthropists to distribute billions of dollars of donations, it is not supported by any of the approaches to moral uncertainty that have been proposed thus-far in the philosophical literature. In this paper, we will develop a bargaining-based approach to moral uncertainty that honors the proportionality intuition in favor of splitting one’s donations. We also show how this bargaining-based approach has several further advantages over the best alternative proposals. (shrink)

The growing emphasis on the importance of publishing scientific findings in the academic world has led to increasing prevalence of potentially significant publications in which scientific and ethical rigour may be questioned. This has not only hindered research progress, but also eroded public trust in all scientific advances. In view of the increasing concern and the complexity of research misconduct, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) was established in 1997 to manage cases with ethical implications. In order to review the (...) outcomes of cases investigated by COPE, a total of 408 cases that had been managed by COPE were successfully extracted and analysed with respect to 7 distinct criteria. The results obtained indicate that the number of ethical implications per case has not changed significantly (p > 0.01) since the year COPE was instigated. Interestingly, the number of ethical cases, and to some extent, research misconduct, is not diminishing. Therefore, journal editors and publishers need to work closely together with COPE to inculcate adoption of appropriate research ethics and values in younger researchers while discouraging others from lowering standards. It is hoped that with a more concerted effort from the academic community and better public awareness, there will be fewer incidences of ethically and scientifically challenged publications. The ultimate aim being to enhance the quality of published works with concomittant public trust in the results. (shrink)