In this paper, we consider three arguments for the irrelevance of the doctrine of double effect in end-of-life decision making. The third argument is our own and, to that extent, we seek to defend it. The first argument is that end-of-life decisions do not in fact shorten lives and that therefore there is no need for the doctrine in justification of these decisions. We reject this argument; some end-of-life decisions clearly shorten lives. The second is that the doctrine of double (...) effect is not recognized in UK law ; therefore, clinicians cannot use it as the basis for justification of their decisions. Against this we suggest that while the doctrine might have dubious legal grounds, it could be of relevance in some ways, e.g. in marking the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable practice in relation to the clinician's duty to relieve pain and suffering. The third is that the doctrine is irrelevant because it requires there to be a bad effect that needs justification. This is not the case in end-of-life care for patients diagnosed as dying. Here, bringing about a satisfactory dying process for a patient is a good effect, not a bad one. What matters is that patients die without pain and suffering. This marks a crucial departure from the double-effect doctrine; if the patient's death is not a bad effect then the doctrine is clearly irrelevant. A diagnosis of dying allows clinicians to focus on good dying and not to worry about whether their intervention affects the time of death. For a patient diagnosed as dying, time of death is rarely important. In our conclusion we suggest that acceptance of our argument might be problematic for opponents of physician-assisted death. We suggest one way in which these opponents might argue for a distinction between such practice and palliative care; this relies on the double-effect doctrine's distinction between foresight and intention. (shrink)

This paper reports a literature review on the topic of ethical issues in in-depth interviews. The review returned three types of article: general discussion, issues in particular studies, and studies of interview-based research ethics. Whilst many of the issues discussed in these articles are generic to research ethics, such as confidentiality, they often had particular manifestations in this type of research. For example, privacy was a significant problem as interviews sometimes probe unexpected areas. For similar reasons, it is difficult to (...) give full information of the nature of a particular interview at the outset, hence informed consent is problematic. Where a pair is interviewed (such as carer and cared-for) there are major difficulties in maintaining confidentiality and protecting privacy. The potential for interviews to harm participants emotionally is noted in some papers, although this is often set against potential therapeutic benefit. As well as these generic issues, there are some ethical issues fairly specific to in-depth interviews. The problem of dual role is noted in many papers. It can take many forms: an interviewer might be nurse and researcher, scientist and counsellor, or reporter and evangelist. There are other specific issues such as taking sides in an interview, and protecting vulnerable groups. Little specific study of the ethics of in-depth interviews has taken place. However, that which has shows some important findings. For example, one study shows participants are not averse to discussing painful issues provided they feel the study is worthwhile. Some papers make recommendations for researchers. One such is that they should consider using a model of continuous (or process) consent rather than viewing consent as occurring once, at signature, prior to the interview. However, there is a need for further study of this area, both philosophical and empirical. (shrink)

_Everyday Life and the Sacred_ offers gender sensitive interdisciplinary perspectives from the fields of feminist theology and religious studies on the everyday and the sacred. The volume aims to re-configure the current domain of religion and gender studies.

_Everyday Life and the Sacred_ offers gender sensitive interdisciplinary perspectives from the fields of feminist theology and religious studies on the everyday and the sacred. The volume aims to re-configure the current domain of religion and gender studies.

Making data broadly accessible is essential to creating a medical information commons. Transparency about data-sharing practices can cultivate trust among prospective and existing MIC participants. We present an analysis of 34 initiatives sharing DNA-derived data based on public information. We describe data-sharing practices captured, including practices related to consent, privacy and security, data access, oversight, and participant engagement. Our results reveal that data-sharing initiatives have some distance to go in achieving transparency.

Advances in technologies and biomedical informatics have expanded capacity to generate and share biomedical data. With a lens on genomic data, we present a typology characterizing the data-sharing landscape in biomedical research to advance understanding of the key stakeholders and existing data-sharing practices. The typology highlights the diversity of data-sharing efforts and facilitators and reveals how novel data-sharing efforts are challenging existing norms regarding the role of individuals whom the data describe.

Meaningful participant engagement has been identified as a key contributor to the success of efforts to share data via a “Medical Information Commons”. We present findings from expert stakeholder interviews aimed at understanding barriers to engagement and the appropriate role of MIC participants. Although most interviewees supported engagement, they distinguished between individual versus collective forms. They also noted challenges including representation and perceived inefficiency, prompting reflection on political aspects of engagement and efficiency concerns.

Este artigo objetivou investigar a síndrome de burnout em estudantes de um curso técnico de enfermagem. Procurou identificar também a existência de associação entre variáveis demográficas e escolares e fatores de estresse numa amostra de 255 estudantes. Como instrumentos de pesquisa foi utilizado um..

With growing concerns over children's suggestibility and how it may impact their reliability as witnesses, there is increasing interest in determining the long-term effects of induced memories. The goal of the present research was to learn whether source misattributions found by Ceci, Huffman, Smith, and Loftus caused permanent memory alterations in the subjects tested. When 22 children from the original study were reinterviewed 2 years later, they recalled 77% of all true events. However, they only consented to 13% of all (...) false events, compared to the 22% false consent rate found by Ceci et al. . Additionally, while children remained accurate in their recall of true events , they “recanted” their earlier false consents 77% of the time, after the 2-year delay. Implications of these findings for child witnesses and the legal system are discussed. (shrink)

Apoptosis is now widely recognized as a common form of cell death and represents a mechanism of cell clearance in many physiological situations where deletion of cells is required. Peptide growth factors, initially characterised as stimulators of cell proliferation, have now been shown to inhibit death in many cell types. Deprivation of growth factors leads to the induction of apoptosis, i.e. condensation of chromatin and degradation in oligonucleosomesized fragments, formation of plasma and nuclear membrane blebs and cell fragmentation into apoptotic (...) bodies which can be taken up by neighbouring cells. Here we discuss the mechanism(;s) by which growth factors may inhibit apoptosis. (shrink)

Proceedings of a forum held in Austin, Tex., on Mother's Day, 1996.

This is a report on the Doctoral Consortium co-located with the 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law in Montreal.

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

We applaud Ray and Cooper (2024) for emphasizing environmental health as a bioethics issue. As a team of interdisciplinary pediatric researchers and providers who are part of an institutional clima...

A 2011 National Academies of Sciences report called for an “Information Commons” and a “Knowledge Network” to revolutionize biomedical research and clinical care. We interviewed 41 expert stakeholders to examine governance, access, data collection, and privacy in the context of a medical information commons. Stakeholders' attitudes about MICs align with the NAS vision of an Information Commons; however, differences of opinion regarding clinical use and access warrant further research to explore policy and technological solutions.

A medical information commons is a networked data environment utilized for research and clinical applications. At three deliberations across the U.S., we engaged 75 adults in two-day facilitated discussions on the ethical and social issues inherent to sharing data with an MIC. Deliberants made recommendations regarding opt-in consent, transparent data policies, public representation on MIC governing boards, and strict data security and privacy protection. Community engagement is critical to earning the public's trust.

This paper challenges historians’ portrayal of Elizabethan puritanism as rooted in the Marian exile of 1553-1558, through a fresh examination of three exiles who have been described as early puritans: James Pilkington, John Jewel, and Laurence Humphrey. By studying the value they placed on church unity, this paper brings out the fundamental differences between the early reformers and the later puritans. It also demonstrates that the religious selfidentity of these men pre-dated the accession of Mary. Thus, their exile was a (...) means of strengthening their faith, not finding it, and their return meant that there was more continuity between the Edwardian and Elizabethan churches than is often allowed in current scholarship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Erika BachiochiAngela KnobelThe Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Erika Bachiochi (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), 422 pp.Erika Bachiochi's The Rights of Women is animated by a clear vision: a vision of men and women as possessors of the same nature and engaged in the same shared enterprise. Men and women possess the (...) same nature because they are rational animals and hence fulfilled by living a life that exhibits the fullness of their rational human nature, and they are engaged in the same enterprise because both naturally pursue the same good: the common good of their families and societies. Bachiochi argues that this Aristotelian and communitarian understanding of the relationship between the sexes was the original vision of feminism: it was the vision of the early feminist Mary [End Page 742] Wollenstonecraft, and likewise the vision that inspired and animated our nation's founding mothers. As feminism's most famous advocates began to adopt the language of the Enlightenment and its incoherent emphasis on "rights," however, Wollenstonecraft's robust and sensible understanding of the right relationship between the sexes was gradually left behind. Modern feminism, Bachiochi argues, needs to reclaim Wollenstonecraft's vision, and has indeed already begun to do so in the communitarian and dignitarian work of Mary Ann Glendon.As is evident from the preceding, there are three distinct claims advanced in Bachiochi's book. First—and this I take to be the overarching thesis of the book—there is a claim about how feminism ought to understand the relationship between the sexes (i.e., in terms of Aristotelian flourishing and natural law). Second, there is the claim that feminism originally did understand the relationship between the sexes in this way. Finally (this is the third thesis), there is the claim that modern feminists have lost this vision, and that the solution to our current woes is to reclaim it. It is important to notice that truth of the first thesis does not depend on the truth of the second or the third, or vice versa. Because the first thesis is to my mind the most interesting and important of the three, it will be the focus of my remarks here. But it is worth making a few brief remarks about the other two theses, if only because so much of the book's content is devoted them.Did early feminists have a clear vision of the right relationship between the sexes, a vision informed by Aristotle and natural law? Did later feminists discard that clear vision? Is Enlightenment philosophy to blame? This is a common narrative, particularly in pro-life circles, and I think there is certainly an element of truth to it. I think Bachiochi rightly recognizes an Aristotelian strain in Wollenstonecraft, and rightly applauds the early feminist advocacy of virtue. What I am not quite ready to accept, though, is the "clear" part of the clear vision. Early feminists subscribed to many admirable views. They also seem to have held some less admirable ones. However laudable her advocacy of virtue and chastity may have been, for instance, Wollenstonecraft seems to have had a very dim view of men (45). Similarly, I found the "voluntary motherhood" movement, which Bachiochi applauds, repellent. If disharmony between the sexes arose from men having too much control over women's sexual lives, harmony will hardly be restored by reversing the equation and instead giving women complete control over sex (109). My own instinct (which this book only reaffirmed) is to think that feminism as a movement has always been a bit confused, has always had some good goals and some that were less so. I think this, in [End Page 743] part, because I am not sure that a coherent "feminism" is possible. I shall say more about this below.Bachiochi's real claim, of course, is that there is a right way to understand men and women, and consequently a right way to be a feminist. But my genuine appreciation for and affirmation of her view of what the right relationship between the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mary as the Exemplar of the Body's PovertyAngela FranksRecent MariologyFollowing the trajectory of Mariology and Marian devotion for the last century or so is enough to give one whiplash. On the one hand, the declaration of the doctrine of Mary's Assumption in 1950 by Pope Pius XII represents a strand of Mariology that emphasizes her divinely granted prerogatives and glory. In popular piety, this dogmatic emphasis was mirrored by (...) devotional practices that stressed Mary's mediatorial power.1 On the other hand, many theologians were concerned that such teaching and practice obscured the centrality of Christ, the Church, and the liturgy in Christian life.2 One could see the placing of Mary within chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium less than fifteen years after the declaration of the Assumption as a rebalancing of Mariology. Lumen Gentium (LG) resituated Mary within the doctrine of the Church, echoing patristic equations of Our Lady with the Church.3 One unintended effect of the conciliar move, however, was to make devotion to Mary seem unnecessary, despite the efforts of [End Page 1097] post-conciliar popes to encourage Marian piety—in particular, John Paul II, with his Marian motto Totus Tuus.John Paul II is in many ways an exemplar of conciliar Marian devotion. His Mariology integrates Mary into ecclesiology by emphasizing her role as the paradigmatic follower of Christ.4 This discipleship is, he is careful to say, due to her maternal role and the extraordinary graces that followed from it.5 But these graces did not eliminate her need to follow her son closely; rather, they made such discipleship possible.This interplay between Mary's need and the unique graces granted to meet that need is perhaps clearest in John Paul II's presentation of Mary's faith.6 This attitude of faith is "central" to John Paul II's presentation of Mary in the encyclical Redemptoris Mater (RM), according to Joseph Ratzinger.7 Because of her faith, which is based on the prior action of God in her life (§38, quoting LG §60), she is due "a wealth of praise" that "is more than ever necessary today" (RM §34). In John Paul II, the seeming either-or of twentieth-century Mariology is dissolved, but through the introduction of a causal relationship between the two. In other words, [End Page 1098] Mary's poverty—her need for and receptivity to God—is what makes her able to be rich, to be worthy of a wealth of praise.Perhaps surprisingly, John Paul Il's presentation of Mary as transparent to the mystery of Christ echoes his theology of the body. There, he repeats a hylomorphic maxim: "The body reveals the person." In this revelation, the poverty and the wealth of the body coincide. The body is of great dignity: it can reveal the person. But it is also poor, because it does not reveal itself but rather is transparent to the inner personal mystery. In this, it resembles Mary.This essay will pick up the trail laid down by John Paul II by examining Mary under the rubric of her poverty. Her poverty, I will argue, is exemplary for the poverty of the body, and neither Mary nor the body can be understood properly without understanding poverty. In this essay, I will explore these topics by looking at the Mariology of John Paul II and Hans Urs von Balthasar, before turning to what this Mariology means for the body and for creation in general.Mary's PovertyRedemptoris Mater presents Mary as a model of pilgrim faith, one who "goes before" us on the pilgrimage (RM §§5–6 and 25–28). Mary's reliance upon faith places her among the anawim, the poor of the Lord. John Paul II quotes §55 of Lumen Gentium to note that Mary "stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently await and receive salvation from him" (RM §§8 and 11). As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Joseph Ratzinger wrote around the time of the Marian encyclical, she is "totally dependent upon God and completely directed towards him, and at the side of her Son, she is... (shrink)

Physicists regularly invoke universal laws, such as those of motion and electromagnetism, to explain events. Biological and medical scientists have no such laws. How then do they acquire a reliable body of knowledge about biological organisms and human disease? One way is by repeatedly returning to, manipulating, observing, interpreting, and reinterpreting certain subjects—such as flies, mice, worms, or microbes—or, as they are known in biology, “model systems.” Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples that (...) have played a role comparable to that of biology’s model systems, serving not only as points of reference and illustrations of general principles or values but also as sites of continued investigation and reinterpretation. The essays in this collection assess the scope and function of model objects in domains as diverse as biology, geology, and history, attending to differences between fields as well as to epistemological commonalities. Contributors examine the role of the fruit fly Drosophila and nematode worms in biology, troops of baboons in primatology, box and digital simulations of the movement of the earth’s crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisoner’s dilemma in game theory, ritual in anthropology, the individual case in psychoanalytic research, and Athenian democracy in political theory. The contributors illuminate the processes through which particular organisms, cases, materials, or narratives become foundational to their fields, and they examine how these foundational exemplars—from the fruit fly to Freud’s Dora—shape the knowledge produced within their disciplines. Contributors Rachel A. Ankeny Angela N. H. Creager Amy Dahan Dalmedico John Forrester Clifford Geertz Carlo Ginzburg E. Jane Albert Hubbard Elizabeth Lunbeck Mary S. Morgan Josiah Ober Naomi Oreskes Susan Sperling Marcel Weber M. Norton Wise. (shrink)

The concept of practical knowledge is central to G.E.M. Anscombe's argument in Intention, yet its meaning is little understood. There are several reasons for this, including a lack of attention to Anscombe's ancient and medieval sources for the concept, and an emphasis on the more straightforward concept of knowledge "without observation" in the interpretation of Anscombe's position. This paper remedies the situation, first by appealing to the writings of Thomas Aquinas to develop an account of practical knowledge as a distinctive (...) form of thought that "aims at production" of things that lie within an agent's power; and then by showing how this Thomistic understanding of practical cognition seems to have been Anscombe's, too. Having done this, I question whether the thesis that agential knowledge is practical knowledge entails that an agent always has non-observational knowledge of what she is intentionally doing. I answer "Not": Anscombe's claims to the contrary rest on a misleading assimilation of human beings' finite agency to that of an infinite agent like God. (shrink)

Do spatial features appear the same whether they are perceived through vision or touch? This question is at stake in the puzzle that William Molyneux posed to John Locke, concerning whether a man born blind whose sight was restored would be able immediately to identify the shapes of the things he saw. A recent study purports to answer the question negatively, but I argue here that the subjects of the study likely could not see well enough for the result to (...) have been meaningful. I then propose a way to improve the study, by including cues from object motion. (shrink)

According to the Self-Location Thesis, one’s own location can be among the things that visual experience represents, even when one’s body is entirely out of view. By contrast, the Minimal View denies this, and says that visual experience represents things only as "to the right", etc., and never as "to the right of me". But the Minimal View is phenomenologically inadequate: it cannot explain the difference between a visual experience of self-motion and one of an oppositely moving world. To show (...) this, I argue (i) that these experiences are different in an important respect, (ii) that this difference is genuinely experiential, (iii) that it is visual, (iv) that it is not purely phenomenal, and (v) that it cannot be identified with anything other than the apparent motion of the self. So the Self-Location Thesis is upheld: reports of one’s own motion can correspond to aspects of visual experiences every bit as basic to their contents as the apparent motion or rest of the things one has in view. (shrink)

This chapter presents a series of experiments that elicit causal judgments using statements that do not include the verb "to cause". In particular, our interest is in exploring the extent to which previously observed effects of normative considerations on agreement with what we call "cause"-statements, i.e. those of the form "X caused ..." extend as well to those of the form "X V-ed Y", where V is a lexical causative. Our principal finding is that in many cases the effects do (...) not extend in this way, and moreover that the cases where we do find the same pattern are those where the causal verb used has a negative valence of its own. We draw two main conclusions from this finding. First, it reveals how the almost exclusive focus on "cause"-statements in the experimental study of causal judgment has led to findings that are unrepresentative of the full range of ordinary causal thinking, and provides a proof of concept as to how this thinking can be studied in its full variety. Second, the results of our experiments provide significant indirect support for the contention that the effect of moral considerations on agreement with "cause"-statements reflect the fact that these statements are most often used to assign responsibility for an event, and not just to describe the causal structure of what happened. It is not causal judgments in general that result from a process in which normative considerations play a role, but perhaps only those judgments that express a determination of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Intuitively, the knowledge of one’s own intentional actions is different from the knowledge of actions of other sorts, including those of other people and unintentional actions of one's own. But how are we to understand this phenomenon? Does it pertain to all actions, under every description under which they are known? If so, then how is this possible? If not, then how should we think about cases that are exceptions to this principle? This paper is a critical survey of recent (...) attempts to answer these questions. I consider views under three headings: "special source" views, which hold that the knowledge of one's intentional actions has a non-perceptual source; "special domain" views, which hold that some but not all aspects of one's intentional actions are known in a special way; and "special character" views, which hold that the knowledge of intentional actions is special not because of where it comes from, but because of some other respect in which it is different in kind from the knowledge of other things. (shrink)

Is it possible to misidentify the object of an episode of bodily awareness? I argue that it is, on the grounds that a person can reasonably be unsure or mistaken as to which part of his or her body he or she is aware of at a given moment. This requires discussing the phenomenon of body ownership, and defending the claim that the proper parts of one’s body are at least no less ‘principal’ among the objects of bodily awareness than (...) is the body as a whole. I conclude with some reasons why this should lead us to think that bodily awareness, unlike introspection, is a form of perception. (shrink)

This chapter discusses how we should think about experiences that threaten to radically transform our understanding of the world. While it can be rational to treat the “doxastically transformative” potential of an experience as a reason to choose against it, such a decision must be based in something more than the fact that this experience would alter one’s current beliefs. It only in light of knowledge of how things are that a person can choose rationally against transformative processes that would (...) destroy this knowledge. (shrink)

For most philosophers who have written recently on the topic, to give into temptation is always to revise a decision in a way that is somehow unreasonable—as when, say, recalling that there is a World Cup game that I can stream from my office, I abandon my plan to spend the morning writing. But I argue in this paper that a person can also give in to the temptation to violate a decision without undoing that decision or even calling it (...) into question. This is possible, I argue, because the content of our decisions does not always settle exactly what is required to abide by them. This slack between the explicit content of our decisions, and the specific acts by which we carry or fail to carry them out, allows us to act contrary to those decisions even as they remain in place. As such, temptation of this kind cannot be resisted simply by refraining from reconsidering our decisions or changing our minds about what to do. (shrink)

This paper compares tracking and phenomenal intentionality theories of intentionality with respect to the issue of naturalism. Tracking theories explicitly aim to naturalize intentionality, while phenomenal intentionality theories generally do not. It might seem that considerations of naturalism count in favor of tracking theories. We survey key considerations relevant to this claim, including some motivations for and objections to the two kinds of theories. We conclude by suggesting that naturalistic considerations may in fact support phenomenal intentionality theories over tracking theories.

Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow ‘absolute’. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain-damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give (...) us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible. (shrink)

David Papineau’s _The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience_ is deep, insightful, refreshingly brisk, and very readable. In it, Papineau argues that sensory experiences are intrinsic and non-relational states of subjects; that they do not essentially involve relations to worldly facts, properties, or other items (though they do happen to correlate with worldly items); and that they do not have truth conditions simply in virtue of their conscious (i.e., phenomenal) features. I am in enthusiastic agreement with the picture as described so far. (...) But Papineau also argues that sensory experiences are in no interesting sense essentially representational and that what is responsible for their truth conditions is their correlations with the environment. Here, I disagree. Indeed, I think Papineau does not follow his arguments to their proper conclusions. For if sensory experiences are intrinsic, non-relational, and only contingently correlated with worldly conditions (as Papineau and I agree they are), then the phenomenal features of sensory states are representational in an important sense: they constitute what we think, perceptually experience, or otherwise entertain, making up how things seem to us from a first-person perspective. Because of this, the truth conditions of perceptual experiences cannot be entirely independent of their phenomenal features. They cannot merely be a matter of environmental correlations. If we follow Papineau’s arguments to their proper conclusions, we end up with a view much closer to a version of representationalism that Papineau dismisses, a view he calls “pure phenomenal intentionalism”. (shrink)

What’s the relationship between (i) intending to do something, (ii) believing that you are going to do this, and (iii) its being the case that you are going to do the thing in question? I propose a position on which all three categories, correctly understood, amount in the fundamental case to the very same thing. The belief that constitutes future-directed intention, when strong, likewise constitutes one as having a real tendency to act in the intended way.

It is natural to assume that the fine-grained and highly accurate spatial information present in visual experience is often used to guide our bodily actions. Yet this assumption has been challenged by proponents of the Two Visual Systems Hypothesis , according to which visuomotor programming is the responsibility of a “zombie” processing stream whose sources of bottom-up spatial information are entirely non-conscious . In many formulations of TVSH, the role of conscious vision in action is limited to “recognizing objects, selecting (...) targets for action, and determining what kinds of action, broadly speaking, to perform” . Our aim in this study is to show that the available evidence not only fails to support this dichotomous view but actually reveals a significant role for conscious vision in motor programming, especially for actions that require deliberate attention. (shrink)

Organe de l’Instituto de Estudios de la Mujer (Institut d’Études sur la Femme) de Grenade, la revue Arenal contient des varia (recensions, articles divers, annonces etc.) et un dossier thématique. Intitulé, dans cette livraison, « Genre et imaginaire religieux : Marie et les femmes », il est coordonné par Angela Muñoz Fernández, qui a signé aussi un de ses articles les plus stimulants. On regrette qu’elle n’ait pas rédigé une présentation générale du numéro ; sa problématique est, cependant,...

Propositionalism is the view that all intentional states are propositional states, which are states with a propositional content, while objectualism is the view that at least some intentional states are objectual states, which are states with objectual contents, such as objects, properties, and kinds. This paper argues that there are two distinct ways of understanding propositionalism and objectualism: (1) as views about the deep nature of the contents of intentional states, and (2) as views about the superficial character of the (...) contents of intentional states. I argue that we should understand the views in the second way. I also argue that the propositionalism debate is fairly independent from debates over the deep nature of intentionality, and that this has implications for arguments for propositionalism and objectualism from claims about the nature of intentional content. I close with a short discussion of how related points apply to the debate over singular content. (shrink)

The most pressing worry for panpsychism is arguably the combination problem, the problem of intelligibly explaining how the experiences of microphysical entities combine to form the experiences of macrophysical entities such as ourselves. This chapter argues that the combination problem is similar in kind to other problems of mental combination that are problems for everyone: the problem of phenomenal unity, the problem of mental structure, and the problem of new quality spaces. The ubiquity of combination problems suggests the ignorance hypothesis, (...) the hypothesis that we are ignorant of certain key facts about mental combination, which allows the panpsychist to avoid certain objections based on the combination problem. (shrink)