Giving money to others feels good. In the past years, this claim has received strong empirical support from psychology and neuroscience. It is now standard to use the label ‘warm glow feelings’ to refer to the pleasure people take from giving, and many explanations of apparently altruistic behavior appeal to these internal rewards. But what exactly are warm glow feelings? Why do people experience them? In order to further our understanding of the phenomenon, we ran two studies: a recall task (...) in which participants were asked to remember a donation they made, and a donation task in which participants were given the opportunity to make a donation before reporting their affective states. In both studies, correlational and experimental evidence converge towards the conclusion that, if the nature of the warm glow is straightforward, its source is multifaceted. Regarding the nature of ‘warm glow’, the pleasure people took in giving was mainly predicted by one particular positive emotion (‘joyful feelings’) and was indeed described by participants as a ‘warm’ sensation. Regarding the underlying psychological mechanisms, ‘warm glow’ feelings were elicited both by positive appraisals regarding the donor’s moral character and positive appraisals regarding the actual impact of the donor’s donation on the welfare of others. We discuss the implications of these findings for the role of positive emotions in explaining why people give. (shrink)

Robin Barrow; Skill Talk, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 187–195, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1987.tb00158.x.

Robin Barrow; Skill Talk, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 187–195, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1987.tb00158.x.

Processed pseudogenes may serve as a genetic reservoir for evolutionary innovation. Here, we argue that through the activity of long interspersed element‐1 retrotransposons, processed pseudogenes disperse coding and noncoding sequences rich with regulatory potential throughout the human genome. While these sequences may appear to be non‐functional, a lack of contemporary function does not prohibit future development of biological activity. Here, we discuss the dynamic evolution of certain processed pseudogenes into coding and noncoding genes and regulatory elements, and their implication in (...) wide‐ranging biological and pathological processes. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/iUY_mteVoPI. (shrink)

Department of Economics, George Mason University, MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030, USA E-mail: [email protected] (http://hanson.gmu.edu).

Robin Barrow; The Concept of Curriculum Design, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 73–80, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467.

Robin Barrow; The Concept of Curriculum Design, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 73–80, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467.

Robin Barrow; Who are the Philosopher-Kings?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 200–221, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

Robin Barrow; Who are the Philosopher-Kings?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 200–221, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

This is a contribution to the first online book debating theism and naturalism. In this contribution, I present the case for theism from the fine-tuning of the universe, and the elegance and intelligibility/discoverability of the law of nature. Also included is Paul Draper’s response to my arguments, along with my replies. (The online book can be found at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-debate.html).

Robin Le Poidevin; II*—Egocentric and Objective Time, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 19–36, https://doi.org/10.

Robin McKenna argues that we need to make space for an approach to epistemology that avoids the idealizations typical of the field. He applies this approach to topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers.

This text examines the intellectual partnership of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Paul Rée (1849-1901), combining biography with philosophy to give an account of a friendship that made major contributions to modern thought"--Provided by publisher.

A model for the ideal state includes discussion of the nature and application of justice, the role of the philosopher in society, the goals of education, and the effects of art upon character.

Many of us hold false beliefs about matters that are relevant to public policy such as climate change and the safety of vaccines. What can be done to rectify this situation? This question can be read in two ways. According to the descriptive reading, it concerns which methods will be effective in persuading people that their beliefs are false. According to the normative reading, it concerns which methods we are permitted to use in the service of persuading people. Some effective (...) methods—a programme of brainwashing, say—would not be permissible. In this paper I compare “methods of rational persuasion” with what you might call “marketing methods” such as how one frames the problem of climate change. My aim is to show that “marketing methods” are preferable to “methods of rational persuasion”. My argument has two parts. First, I argue that the evidence suggests that “marketing methods” are more effective in persuading people to change their minds. Second, I argue that “marketing methods” are an acceptable response to the normative question. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a version of contextualism that I call interests contextualism. Interests contextualism is the view that the truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing and denying sentences are partly determined by the ascriber’s interests and purposes. It therefore stands in opposition to the usual view on which the truth-conditions are partly determined by the ascriber’s conversational context. I give an argument against one particular implementation of the usual view, differentiate interests contextualism from other prominent versions of contextualism and argue (...) that, unlike those versions, interests contextualism can mitigate against the epistemic descent objection put forward by Duncan Pritchard in his ‘Contextualism, Scepticism, and the Problem of Epistemic Descent’ (the objection is that, on the contextualist view, an ascriber of knowledge cannot, for some subject S and proposition p, properly ascribe knowledge that p to S if that ascriber has previously retracted an earlier ascription of knowledge that p to S). (shrink)

In spite of advances in medicine and public health, malaria and other mosquito‐borne diseases are on the rise worldwide. Although vaccines, genetically modified mosquitoes and safer insecticides are under development, herein we examine a promising new approach to malaria control through better repellents. Current repellents, usually based on DEET, inhibit host finding by impeding insect olfaction, but have significant drawbacks. We discuss how comparative genomics, using data from the Anopheles genome project, allows the rapid identification of members of three protein (...) classes critical to insect olfaction: odorant‐binding proteins, G‐protein‐coupled receptors, and odorant‐degrading enzymes. A rational design approach similar to that used by the pharmaceutical industry for drug development can then be applied to the development of products that interfere with mosquito olfaction. Such products have the potential to provide more complete, safer and longer lasting protection than conventional repellents, preventing disease transmission by interrupting the parasite life cycle. BioEssays 25:1011–1020, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A translation of Plato's dialogue on the nature of pleasure and its relation to thought and knowledge. It includes a cogent introduction, notes, and comprehensive bibliography.

I develop and argue for a version of epistemic contextualism - the view that the truth-values of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions depend upon and vary with the context in which they are uttered - that emphasises the roles played by both the practical interests of those in the context and the epistemic practices of the community of which they are part in determining the truth-values of their ‘knowledge’ ascriptions. My favoured way of putting it is that the truth of a ‘knowledge’ ascription (...) of the form ‘S knows that p’ requires that the subject of the ascription can rule out the relevant alternatives in which not-p, where the relevant alternatives are the ones that those in the ascriber’s context have a reason to consider. What alternatives those in the context have a reason to consider depends on their practical situation and on what alternatives are generally considered relevant within their community. I call this ‘interests contextualism’. The thesis splits into three parts. First, I deal with what I call ‘linguistic objections’, which purport to show that there’s no linguistic evidence that the expression ‘knows’ is context-sensitive, and objections concerning the way ‘knows’ behaves in intra- and inter-contextual disagreement reports. I argue that there are a number of ways in which contextualists can deal with these objections. Consequently, they provide no reason to reject contextualism. Second, there are a number of ways of going beyond the basic contextualist thesis, and I argue that the best way is along the lines indicated above, viz. interests contextualism. In the process I articulate a number of desiderata for a contextualist account of the features of context that are responsible for contextual variation in the truth-values of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions. I argue that, unlike its main rival - which I call ‘conversational contextualism’ - interests contextualism can satisfy all of the desiderata. Consequently, interests contextualism is preferable to conversational contextualism. Third, I argue that there is good reason to prefer interests contextualism to its noncontextualist rivals, strict invariantism, sensitive invariantism and relativism. The objections dealt with in the first part are meant to provide the main reason to prefer a sort of relativism to interests contextualism. Consequently, the upshot of the first part is that relativism is off the table. The considerations that tell in favour of interests contextualism and against sensitive invariantism are of two types. First, I argue that interests contextualism can deal with a wider range of cases than sensitive invariantism. Second, I argue that the influential account of the function of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions developed in Edward Craig tells against sensitive invariantism and in favour of interests contextualism. I also argue that the second consideration tells against strict invariantism as much as sensitive invariantism. Consequently, I conclude that interests contextualism is preferable to all of its rivals. (shrink)

The trial of Socrates -- Socrates in court -- How the system worked -- The charge of impiety -- The war years -- Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu -- Pestilence and war -- The rise and fall of Alcibiades -- The end of the war -- Critias and Civil War --- Crisis and conflict -- Symptoms of change -- Reactions to intellectuals -- The condemnation of Socrates -- Socratic politics -- A cock for Asclepius.

One of the most important students of Franz Brentano was Anton Marty, who made it his task to develop a philosophy of language on the basis of Brentano’s analysis of mind. It is most unfortunate that Marty does not receive the attention he deserves, primarily due to his detailed and distracting polemics. In the analysis presented here his philosophy of language and other aspects of his thought, such as his ontology , are examined first and foremost in their positive rather (...) than critical character. The analysis is moreover supplemented by translations of four important works by Marty, including his entire work On the Origin of Language. These are in fact the first English translations of any substantial writings by him. The resulting picture that emerges from the analysis and translations is that Marty has much to say that proves to be of enduring interest for the philosophy of language on a range of topics, especially the meanings of statements, of emotive expressions, and of names as regards both their communicative and their ontological aspects. The volume will be of interest not only to philosophers and historians of philosophy, but also to historians of linguistics and psychology. (shrink)

Atheism has had a strong presence on YouTube since its founding in the mid-2000s, which coincided with the rise of the new atheism movement, and lay atheists were quick to use the platform to spread new atheist ideas. Drawing from a sample of sixty-five atheist YouTube channels located and observed through online ethnographic methods, this article views YouTube videos as educational resources for atheists. It investigates different types of educational videos and ways of thinking about science, philosophy, and religion that (...) atheist content creators utilize and promote. The analysis reveals that they consistently frame these domains of knowledge through the truth claims they make and generally construct them within a hierarchical framework, with scientific knowledge at the top and religious knowledge at the bottom. Overall, their educational content reproduces new atheist discourses around these subjects, revealing the continuing influence of new atheism, two decades after its emergence. Furthermore, the popularity of videos that debunk arguments from religious apologists suggests that the intended audience of these videos includes both atheists, who are expected to need to learn to defend their atheism in debate with religious others, and “potential atheists”, religious believers who can be deconverted using rational arguments. (shrink)

The concept of yinyang lies at the heart of Chinese thought and culture. The relationship between these two opposing, yet mutually dependent, forces is symbolized in the familiar black and white symbol that has become an icon in popular culture across the world. The real significance of yinyang is, however, more complex and subtle. This brilliant and comprehensive analysis by one of the leading authorities in the field captures the richness and multiplicity of the meanings and applications of yinyang, including (...) its visual presentations. Through a vast range of historical and textual sources, the book examines the scope and role of yinyang, the philosophical significance of its various layers of meanings and its relation to numerous schools and traditions within Chinese philosophy. By putting yinyang on a secure and clear philosophical footing, the book roots the concept in the original Chinese idiom, distancing it from Western assumptions, frameworks and terms, yet also seeking to connect its analysis to shared cross-cultural philosophical concerns. (shrink)

It is natural to think of remembering in terms of causation: I can recall a recent dinner with a friend because I experienced that dinner. Some fifty years ago, Martin and Deutscher (1966) turned this basic thought into a full-fledged theory of memory, a theory that came to dominate the landscape in the philosophy of memory. Remembering, Martin and Deutscher argue, requires the existence of a specific sort of causal connection between the rememberer's original experience of an event and his (...) later representation of that event: a causal connection sustained by a memory trace. In recent years, it has become apparent that this reference to memory traces may be out of step with memory science. Contemporary proponents of the causal theory are thus confronted with the question: is it possible to develop an empirically adequate version of the theory, or is it time to move beyond it? This chapter traces the recent history of the causal theory, showing how increased awareness of the theory’s problems has led to the development of modified version of the causal theory and ultimately to the emergence of postcausal theories. (shrink)

This book treats Chinese philosophy today as a global project, presenting the work of both Chinese and Western philosophers.

How ought you to evaluate your options if you’re uncertain about which axiology is true? One prominent response is Expected Moral Value Maximisation, the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected moral value across axiologies. EMVM raises two fundamental questions. First, there’s a question about what it should even mean. In particular, it presupposes that we can compare moral value across axiologies. So to even understand EMVM, we (...) need to explain what it is for such comparisons to hold. Second, assuming that we understand it, there’s a question about whether EMVM is true. Since there are many plausible rivals, we need an argument to defend it. In this paper, I’ll introduce a representation theorem for axiological uncertainty to answer these two questions. Roughly, the theorem shows that if all our axiologies satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, and if the facts about which options are better than which in light of your uncertainty also satisfy these axioms as well as a Pareto condition, then these facts have a relevantly unique expected utility representation. If I’m right, this theorem at once affords us a compelling way to understand EMVM—and specifically intertheoretic comparisons—and a systematic argument for its truth. (shrink)

Organizations have neither a right to the vote nor a weighty right to life. We need not enfranchise Goldman Sachs. We should feel few scruples in dissolving Standard Oil. But they are not without rights altogether. We can owe it to them to keep our promises. We can owe them debts of gratitude. Thus, we can owe some things to organizations. But we cannot owe them everything we can owe to people. They seem to have a peculiar, fragmented moral status. (...) What explains this? Individualistic views explain this in terms of individualistic notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke any distinctive features of organizations. They just invoke the features of individual members of organizations. Collectivistic views, instead, explain this in terms of collective notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke the features of individual members of organizations. They just invoke the features of those organizations. We argue that neither approach works. Instead, one needs to synthesize the two approaches. Some individual interests, we think, are distinctively collective. We, as individuals, have a distinctive interest in playing a part in successful collective action. From this, so we argue, flows the apparently peculiar, fragmented moral status of organizations. (shrink)

In her paper “Democracy, Public Policy, and Lay Assessments of Scientific Testimony” Elizabeth Anderson (2011) identifies a tension between the requirements of responsible public policy making and democratic legitimacy. The tension, put briefly, is that responsible public policy making should be based on the best available scientific research, but for it to be democratically legitimate there must also be broad public acceptance of whatever policies are put in place. In this chapter I discuss this tension, with a strong focus on (...) the issue of climate change. My aims are twofold. First, I argue that the tension is harder to resolve than Anderson supposes because some ways of securing acceptance for science-based policies will themselves be democratically illegitimate. Second, I take a closer look at the role intellectual autonomy plays in the tension. Many think that what I call “science marketing” methods for securing broad(er) acceptance of scientific claims are illegitimate because they infringe on our intellectual autonomy. I argue that it is less clear that this is true than many suppose. This is because, put roughly, judicious use of targeted science marketing methods need not stop us from developing the ability to think about scientific issues for ourselves. In fact, they may even aide us in developing this ability. While this doesn’t quite resolve the tension identified by Anderson, it does some of the necessary groundwork for resolving it. (shrink)

This article investigates the essay the Descriptio Silentii (Description of Silence) by Celio Calcagnini, a humanist scholar from Ferrara, an essay written in the early sixteenth century and published in 1544. The article provides the first English translation of the essay, describes its inspiration and sources and reviews the content of the essay in order to assess Calcagnini’s contribution to the philosophy of silence from the Renaissance and before. Calcagnini’s essay is an ekphrasis of a picture supposedly located in the (...) ruins of the Roman temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste, the inspiration for its format is the late Hellenistic text the Tabula Cebetis, and the principal content is an appeal for the virtues of silence in human affairs and the castigation of the garrulous following the example of Plutarch’s essay De Garrulitate from the Moralia. However, this appeal to the virtues of silence is a prelude to the deeper theme and purpose of the essay: the theme of mystical silence, a silence by which it is possible to approach and understand the god-head and the divine, and which can only be expressed in non-verbal language, riddles or poetic imagery. (shrink)

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the “Role-Ideal Model” is (...) that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles as parents, colleagues, employers, citizens, etc., because roles are the site where structure meets agency. In short, the Role-Ideal Model explains how individual action contributes to structural change, justifies demands for action from each particular agent, specifies what kinds of acts should be undertaken, moderates between demanding too much and too little of individual agents, and provides an account of the critical responses appropriate for holding individuals accountable for structural injustice. (shrink)

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This essay explores a curious point of intersection in the historical pairing of becoming and negation, between two thinkers and two traditions: the Sophist Protagoras of fifth-century BCE Greece and the second-century CE South Asian Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. I offer a speculative account of how becoming and negation are linked in Protagoras—speculative because only so much can be deduced from the extant fragments and testimony. I compare that account to the more coherent picture offered by Nāgārjuna—more coherent because a complete (...) account of the logic that links becoming and negation is carefully preserved in the works attributed to Nāgārjuna. While no specific conclusions regarding the bridge that linked India and Greece may be reached, the similarities between these thinkers and the greater coherence of the Buddhist tradition nevertheless offer hypothetical possibilities for reconstructing the larger architecture of the world of sophistic thought that is now lost to us. (shrink)

Mechanisms are the how of chemical reactions. Substances are individuated by their structures at the molecular scale, so a chemical reaction is just the transformation of reagent structures into product structures. Explaining a chemical reaction must therefore involve different hypotheses about how this might happen: proposing, investigating and sometimes eliminating different possible pathways from reagents to products. One distinctive aspect of mechanisms in chemistry is that they are broken down into a few basic kinds of step involving the breaking and (...) making of bonds between atoms. This is necessary for chemical kinetics, the study of how fast reactions happen, and what affects it. It draws on G.N. Lewis’ identification of the chemical bond as involving shared electrons, which from the 1920s achieved the commensuration of chemistry and physics. The breaking or making of a bond just is the transfer of electrons, so a chemical bond on one side of an equation might be balanced on the other side by the appearance of a corresponding quantity of excess charge. A bond is understood to have been exchanged for a pair of electrons. Since reaction mechanisms rely on identities, doesn’t the establishment of a reaction mechanism explain away the chemical phenomena, showing that they are no more than the movement of charges and masses? In one sense yes: these mechanisms seem to involve a conserved-quantity conception of causation. But in another sense no: the ‘lower-level’ entities can do what they do only when embedded in higher-level organisation or structure. There need be no threat of reduction. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated (...) with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

The normative mechanics of promising seem complex. The strength and content of promissory obligations, and the residual duties they entail upon being violated, have various prima facie surprising features. We give an account to explain these features. Promises have a point. The point of a promise to φ is a promise-independent reason to φ for the promisee’s sake. A promise turns this reason into a duty. This explains the mechanics of promises. And it grounds a nuanced picture of immoral promises, (...) an argument against promissory bare wrongings, and a constraint on theories of why we have promissory obligations at all. (shrink)