In this paper, I would like to explore the idea that some non-human animals may be incapable of detaching or separating some of their concepts both from other concepts and from the larger thought contents that they are part of. This, in turn, will make it impossible for them to recombine these undetachable concepts with others in every admissible way. I will begin by distinguishing three different ways in which one concept may be undetachable from others, and I will show (...) how each of them leads to specific restrictions in the kinds of conceptual re-combinations that they admit. Finally, I will try to provide some theoretical reasons, as well as some empirical evidence, to give at least initial support to the hypothesis that some non-human animals actually suffer from the limitations previously identified. (shrink)

Philosophers have understood propositional contents in many different ways, some of them imposing stricter demands on cognition than others. In this paper, I want to characterize a specific sub-type of propositional content that shares many core features with full-blown propositional contents while lacking others. I will call them modest propositional contents, and I will be especially interested in examining which behavioral patterns would justify their attribution to non-human animals. To accomplish these tasks, I will begin by contrasting modest propositional contents (...) with primitive feature-placing contents: a kind of content that, according to some philosophers, can explain the behavior of non-human animals. I will examine which cognitive abilities are involved in having mental states with each of these contents and which sorts of behavioral patterns would provide evidence that an animal has one of them or another. Finally, I will present some empirical evidence which strongly suggests that some non-human animals have mental states with modest propositional contents. (shrink)

Camp (2009) distinguishes two varieties of conceptual recombination. One of them is full-blown or (as I prefer to call it) spontaneous recombination. The other is causal-counterfactual recombination. She suggests that while human animals recombine their concepts in a full-blown way, many non-human animals are capable of conceptual recombinability but only of the causal-counterfactual kind. In this paper, I argue that there is conceptual space to draw further sub-distinctions on how different animals may recombine their concepts. More specifically, I propose to (...) differentiate between a) narrow causal-counterfactual recombination; b) broad causal-counterfactual recombination; c) lean spontaneous recombination; d) robust spontaneous recombination. Afterwards, I focus on how these distinctions relate to several previous philosophical ideas on the representational capacities of non-human animals. I also provide several empirical examples suggesting that some animals display one or another of these four ways of recombining concepts, at least in some contexts. (shrink)

Camp (2009) distinguishes two varieties of conceptual recombination. One of them is full-blown or (as I prefer to call it) spontaneous recombination. The other is causal-counterfactual recombination. She suggests that while human animals recombine their concepts in a full-blown way, many non-human animals are capable of conceptual recombinability but only of the causal-counterfactual kind. In this paper, I argue that there is conceptual space to draw further sub-distinctions on how different animals may recombine their concepts. More specifically, I propose to (...) differentiate between a) narrow causal-counterfactual recombination; b) broad causal-counterfactual recombination; c) lean spontaneous recombination; d) robust spontaneous recombination. Afterwards, I focus on how these distinctions relate to several previous philosophical ideas on the representational capacities of non-human animals. I also provide several empirical examples suggesting that some animals display one or another of these four ways of recombining concepts, at least in some contexts. (shrink)

According to Hutto and Satne, 521–536, 2015), an “essential tension” plagues contemporary neo-Pragmatist accounts of mental contents: their explanation of the emergence and constitution of intentional mental contents is circular. After identifying the problem, they also propose a solution: what neo-Pragmatists need to do, to overcome circularity, is to appeal to a primitive content-free variety of intentionality, different from the full-blown intentionality of propositional attitudes. In this paper, I will argue that, in addition to the problem of circularity, there is (...) another important problem that both neo-Pragmatist accounts, and Hutto and Satnes’s refinement of them, should also deal with: their difficulty to accommodate a host of recent empirical evidence and theoretical developments on the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. I will call this difficulty the objection from animal minds, and I will present several arguments designed to show that, even though the notion of primitive intentionality, introduced by Hutto and Satne, may be useful to account for some of the most basic ways of dealing with the environment of nonhuman animals, it falls short of providing an adequate explanation of the full-range of cognitive capacities and behavioral dispositions that many animal species display. Thus, their proposal ends up being insufficient to help neo-Pragmatist approaches to overcome the problem of animal minds. Finally, I will suggest that overcoming this objection requires attributing to non-human animals some basic, yet content involving, kinds of intentional mental states. (shrink)

In “Against alief”, Mandelbaum :197–211, 2013) argues that if aliefs—a sui generis kind of mental states originally posited by Gendler :634–663, 2008a; Mind Lang 23:552–585, 2008b; Analysis 72:799–811, 2012)—are to play the explanatory role that is usually ascribed to them, their contents must be propositionally structured. However, he contends, if aliefs have propositional contents, it is unclear what distinguishes them from beliefs. I find Mandelbaum’s arguments in favour of the idea that aliefs must have propositional contents to be compelling. However, (...) I think aliefs should only be credited with a deflated kind of propositional content that I will baptize as “semi-structured propositional contents”, since they are composed by representational units that are neither fully un-detachable nor fully re-combinable. As I will argue, this way of understanding the content of aliefs not only allows us to accommodate all the worries raised by Mandelbaum regarding the nature of their contents, but it also it helps explain why aliefs have some of the peculiar features that Gendler ascribes to them. Consequently, it gives to the advocates of aliefs new tools to defend, against Mandelbaum, that these are sui generis mental states with their distinctive functional role in our cognitive lives. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene dos objetivos centrales. Primero caracterizaré una variante de pragmatismo conceptual según la cual algunos conceptos deben entenderse como habilidades para identificar sustancias e identificar propiedades del entorno, y mostraré que quien cuenta con esas dos habilidades satisface, en grados diversos en cada caso, distintos requisitos centrales para la posesión de conceptos. Posteriormente defenderé la viabilidad de extender este enfoque a los animales no humanos, apelando a evidencia empírica que indica que distintas especies son capaces de identificar (...) sustancias de su entorno y que sugiere la presencia de habilidades para identificar propiedades en algunos primates y pájaros. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers of mind have called the attention to the idea according to which we can perceive, in many cases, some mental states of others. In this paper we consider two recent proposals: the co-presence thesis and the hybrid model. We will examine the aforementioned alternatives and present some objections against both of them. Then, we will propose a way of integrating both accounts that allows us to avoid these objections. In a nutshell, our idea is that by perceiving (...) other people’s behaviors we perceive their mental states because behaviors co-present some features of the latter that go beyond the former, and this perception of others’ minds is direct an immediate because behavior is a constitutive part of mental states. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Davidson’s argument from referential opacity against the attribution of thoughts to non-linguistics animals. I will begin by reconstructing the strongest version of the argument — i.e., the one which is better suited to overcome the different objections that have been raised against it. Once that is done, I will also object this version arguing, in a nutshell, that the fact that non-human animals lack language does not preclude us from acquiring some knowledge of their mental (...) contents. Thus, I conclude that the argument from referential opacity fails to support Davidson’s radical skepticism regarding the possibility of acquiring knowledge of the mental contents of non-linguistic animals, and of legitimately attributing intentional mental states to them. (shrink)

If we focus on current debates on how creatures revise or correct their beliefs, we can identify two opposing approaches that we propose to call “intellectualism” and “minimalism.” In this paper, we outline a new account of doxastic revision — “the first-order model”— that is neither as cognitively demanding as intellectualism nor as deflationary as minimalism. First-order doxastic revision, we argue, is a personal-level process in which a creature rejects some beliefs and accepts others based on reasons. However, it does (...) not involve second-order thinking or sophisticated semantic and epistemic concepts. Besides defending that there is conceptual space for this alternative, we explore the possibility of extending it to some non-human animals. Based on our interpretation of some empirical evidence, we conclude that there are initial reasons to think that some animals — i.e., great apes— might be able to correct their beliefs in the way that our first-order model suggests. (shrink)

Lurz and Krachun propose a new experimental protocol designed to discriminate genuine mindreading animals from mere behavior-readers and to give evidence in favor of the claim that chimpanzees are capable of attributing internal goals to others. They suggest that chimpanzees' variety of "internal goal attribution" consists in attributing to others basic intentional representations, baptized by Millikan as "pushmi-pullyu representations". Now, Millikan distinguishes what I propose to call 'pure' PPs from more complex varieties of PPs, which allow their owners to respond (...) more flexibly to their environments. But, what would happen if we tried to differentiate, analogously, between more or less sophisticated mind-readers in virtue of the sorts of PPs that they could attribute to others? What would attributing complex PPs consist in and how would such capacity increase the predictive powers of chimpanzee mind-readers? This paper offers an answer to these questions. Based on Millikan's work, I differentiate two varieties of complex PPs. Then, I examine what a basic mind-reader, only capable of attributing 'pure' PPs, would be able to do. After that, I distinguish two more sophisticated varieties of mindreading, each consisting in the attribution of one of the complex PPs previously presented, and I show how the ability to attribute complex PPs to others comes with more potent and flexible capacities to anticipate their behavior. Finally, I offer some reasons to think that attributing complex PPs is still simpler than full-blown mindreading and I briefly evaluate the prospects of extending this proposal to infant social cognition. (shrink)

“Intentional Attributions to Animals without Language: Aspectuality and Referential Opacity”. It is generally accepted that intentional attributions are referentially opaque. But, as it is also stressed in the literature, referential opacity introduces difficulties to those who defend the attribution of intentionalmental states to non-human animals. In this paper: i) I identify one of these difficulties –which I call the problem of nonsense –; ii) I offer an answer to that problem. In order to accomplish ii), I begin by examining which (...) are the behavioral and representational requisites that a creature has to satisfy so that our mental states attributions to it are referentially opaque but, at the same time, avoid the problem of nonsense. Secondly, I offer some empirical examples of non-human animals which seem to follow such requirements. (shrink)

Nuestros intentos por hallar palabras que capturen de modo preciso los contenidos de los pensamientos de los animales suelen tropezar con dificultades persistentes. En este trabajo evaluaré dos explicaciones de este fenómeno discutidas por Beck : la explicación basada en el carácter poco familiar de los contenidos animales -que él rechaza- y la basada en diferencias de formato -que resulta su favorita-. En primer lugar, objetaré las razones por las cuales Beck descarta la explicación basada en el carácter poco familiar (...) de los contenidos. En segundo lugar argumentaré que, aunque algunas dificultades para expresar lingüísticamente los pensamientos animales pueden surgir por diferencias de formato, hay otras que no parecen deberse a este factor. Luego sugeriré que, a fin de comprender adecuadamente el problema que nos ocupa, deberíamos elaborar una explicación dual que apele, en algunos casos, a las diferencias de contenido y, en otros, a las diferencias de formato. When we try to find a precise linguistic expression to the contents of animal thoughts we face persisting difficulties. In this paper, I will evaluate two alternative explanations of this phenomenon: the explanation from unfamiliar contents and the explanation from nonlinguistic format. Beck rejects the former and endorses the latter. I will begin by presenting objections against Beck's reasons to reject the explanation from unfamiliar contents. Afterwards, I will argue, against Beck, that even if some difficulties to put into words the contents of animal thoughts may be due to their nonlinguistic format, others have a different source. Thus, I will suggest that if we want to reach a more encompassing understanding of these difficulties, we need to develop a dual explanation which incorporates both differences in formats and differences in contents. (shrink)

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy which addresses the concerns of ethics, customer experience, and employee engagement while creating a unique organizational culture where both leaders and followers unite to reach organizational goals without positional or authoritative power. With employees viewed as one of the greatest assets for organizations, maintaining loyal, productive employees while balancing profits becomes a challenge for leaders, and drives the need to understand employee engagement drivers. Thus, the purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore servant (...) leadership from the perspective of employees. Participants were 11 employees from a servant leadership led restaurant who took part in two focus groups. The modified van Kaam method (Moustakas 1994) contributed to data analysis, which examined employee responses for comparison and assessment. Several themes emerged including servant leader experience, servant leader traits, the impact of servant leadership, the application of servant leadership, and limited employee attrition. The themes revealed servant leadership positively influences employee engagement while contributing to employee loyalty to the workplace. Based on the servant leader experience, participants were more committed, built healthy work relationships, and actively participated in achieving organizational goals. Findings are discussed in light of current research and practical applications are provided. (shrink)

The history of the field of intersex bodies/bodies with variations of sex development reflects the ongoing tension between sociomedical attempts to control uncertainty and reduce the duration of corporeal uncertainty by means of early diagnosis and treatment, and the embodied subjects who resist or challenge these attempts, which ultimately increase uncertainty. Based on various qualitative studies in the field of intersex, this article describes three temporal sociomedical approaches that have evolved over the last decade and aims to address the uncertainty (...) surrounding intersex/VSD bodies. These approaches are the corrective-concealing approach, which includes early surgeries and hormone therapies intended to “correct” intersex conditions and the deliberate concealment of the ambiguity and uncertainty associated with intersex conditions; the preventive approach, which involves early genetic diagnostic methods aimed at regulating or preventing the recurrence of hereditary conditions under the umbrella of VSD; and the wait-and-see approach, which perceives intersex bodies as natural variations and encourages parents to take time, wait, and give their children the right to bodily autonomy. A comparison of these approaches from biopolitical, phenomenological, and pragmatic perspectives reveals that time is an essential social agent in addressing and controlling uncertainty, a gatekeeper of social norms and social and physical orders, and, on the other hand, a sociopolitical agent that enables creative social change. (shrink)

In 1906, Frigyes Riesz introduced a preliminary version of the notion of a topological space. He called it a mathematical continuum. This development can be traced back to the end of 1904 when, genuinely interested in taking up Hilbert’s foundations of geometry from 1902, Riesz aimed to extend Hilbert’s notion of a two-dimensional manifold to the three-dimensional case. Starting with the plane as an abstract point-set, Hilbert had postulated the existence of a system of neighbourhoods, thereby introducing the notion of (...) an accumulation point for the point-sets of the plane. Inspired by Hilbert’s technical approach, as well as by recent developments in analysis and point-set topology in France, Riesz defined the concept of a mathematical continuum as an abstract set provided with a notion of an accumulation point. In addition, he developed further elementary concepts in abstract point-set topology. Taking an abstract topological approach, he formulated a concept of three-dimensional continuous space that resembles the modern concept of a three-dimensional topological manifold. In 1908, Riesz presented his concept of mathematical continuum at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rome. His lecture immediately won the attention of people interested in carrying on his research. They promoted his ideas, thus assuring their gradual reception by several future founders of general topology. In this way, Riesz’s work contributed significantly to the emergence of this discipline. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project in (...) this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony. (shrink)

In this comprehensive new study of human free agency, Laura Waddell Ekstrom critically surveys contemporary philosophical literature and provides a novel account of the conditions for free action. Ekstrom argues that incompatibilism concerning free will and causal determinism is true and thus the right account of the nature of free action must be indeterminist in nature. She examines a variety of libertarian approaches, ultimately defending an account relying on indeterministic causation among events and appealing to agent causation only in (...) a reducible sense. Written in an engaging style and incorporating recent scholarship, this study is critical reading for scholars and students interested in the topics of motivation, causation, responsibility, and freedom. In broadly covering the important positions of others along with its exposition of the author’s own view, Free Will provides both a significant scholarly contribution and a valuable text for courses in metaphysics and action theory. (shrink)

This article focuses on the dynamic between the medical policy on intersex bodies and intersex activists in Israel. Recently, in many countries changes have taken place in medical guidelines regarding intersex patients and laws that regulate medical practices and prohibit irreversible surgeries for intersex babies for cosmetic reasons and without the patient’s consent. In Israel, intersex activists are limited by several factors. On the one hand, they are influenced by the achievements of intersex activism around the world but on the (...) other, the pathologizing medical discourse and socio-medical practices, which include early diagnosis, early irreversible surgeries, and secrecy surrounding intersexed bodies, present obstacles to achieving bodily autonomy for intersex individuals and social recognition of different sex development. Nevertheless, intersex activists are attempting to find different social and media spaces in which to achieve public acknowledgement and future bodily autonomy for intersexed people and seeking medical professionals’ cooperation. Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Health published a new circular for intersex/DSD patients, and while it does not clearly forbid irreversible surgeries, it provides information about the complexities of intersex people and their experience. (shrink)

The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.” It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society (...) and its concerns, _Reforming Philosophy_ shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin. Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today. A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, _Reforming Philosophy_ is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy. (shrink)

Philosophers of quantum mechanics have generally addressed exceedingly simple systems. Laura Ruetsche offers a much-needed study of the interpretation of more complicated systems, and an underexplored family of physical theories, such as quantum field theory and quantum statistical mechanics, showing why they repay philosophical attention. She guides those familiar with the philosophy of ordinary QM into the philosophy of 'QM infinity', by presenting accessible introductions to relevant technical notions and the foundational questions they frame--and then develops and defends answers (...) to some of those questions. Finally, Ruetsche highlights ties between the foundational investigation of QM infinity and philosophy more broadly construed, in particular by using the interpretive problems discussed to motivate new ways to think about the nature of physical possibility and the problem of scientific realism. (shrink)

As library collections and services have increasingly moved from print to digital, much of the work that used to be done by libraries themselves with regard to creating, maintaining, and managing the systems that hold collections and facilitate user access to them is now done primarily by vendors. This change to the information services landscape for academic libraries is the occasion not only of technical and procedural challenges, but also some internal conflicts concerning the ethical demands of the library profession. (...) This essay examines the ways in which these conflicts become acute and obvious when attention is paid to the way in which attempts to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are undermined by the handover of library services to vendors, even when—or perhaps especially when—those vendors use their control of content and platforms to commodify diverse content instead of making the necessary systemic changes required by truly effective EDI efforts. (shrink)

Language expert and psychologist, Laurent Danon-Boileau, has spent a lifetime trying to release silent children's ability to communicate. This book describes his treatment of six patients, all of whom were able to begin normal schooling after treatment: it is a landmark in the field.Children who speak late are a source of anxiety to parents and evoke conflicting responses from professionals. Professor Danon-Boileau argues that language disorders are too often considered from the perspective of either psychology or neurology and (...) that the key to understanding lies in investigating the interactions of developmental, social, and neurobiological factors.The Silent Child allows the reader to meet the children as they are gently guided by the author towards communication, first without language, using toys and games, and then gradually to the ability to talk. (shrink)

Outlaw emotions are emotions that stand in tension with one’s wider belief system, often allowing epistemic insight one may have otherwise lacked. Outlaw emotions are thought to play crucial epistemic roles under conditions of oppression. Although the crucial epistemic value of these emotions is widely acknowledged, specific accounts of their epistemic role(s) remain largely programmatic. There are two dominant accounts of the epistemic role of emotions: The Motivational View and the Justificatory View. Philosophers of emotion assume that these dominant ways (...) of accounting for the epistemic role(s) of emotions in general are equipped to account for the epistemic role(s) of outlaw emotions. I argue that this is not the case. I consider and dismiss two responses that could be made on behalf of the most promising account, the Justificatory View, in light of my argument, before sketching an alternative account that should be favoured. (shrink)

What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non-accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as samesaying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoughts. The key question, then, is what psychological (...) and social facts could play these roles? Elsewhere, we have argued for a specific relational model of concept identity, the connectedness model (e.g. Schroeter 2012, Schroeter and Schroeter 2014, 2015). Our aim in this chapter is to further explain the motivations behind that account, to address worries about transitivity and vagueness, and to contrast our approach with closely related accounts of concept identity developed by François Recanati and Simon Prosser. -/- What’s distinctive of our approach is that we seek to vindicate the first-person epistemic perspective of concept users. Concepts, on our account, play a crucial normative role in setting regulative ideals for the representational practices in which individual subjects participate. This focus on the normative role of concepts – as opposed to a purely causal explanatory role – motivates our approach to concept identity and our toleration of vagueness and borderline cases. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to understanding the changing role of government in promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR). Over the last decade, governments have joined other stakeholders in assuming a relevant role as drivers of CSR, working together with intergovernmental organizations and recognizing that public policies are key in encouraging a greater sense of CSR. This paper focuses on the analysis of the new strategies adopted by governments in order to promote, and encourage businesses to adopt, CSR (...) values and strategies. The research is based on the analysis of an explanatory framework, related to the development of a relational analytical framework, which tries to analyze the vision, values, strategies and roles adopted by governments, and the integration of new partnerships that governments establish in the CSR area with the private sector and social organizations. The research compares CSR initiatives and public policies in three European countries: Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom, and focuses on governmental drivers and responses. The preliminary results demonstrate that governments are incorporating a common statement and discourse on CSR, working in partnership with the private and social sectors. For governments, CSR implies the need to manage a complex set of relationships in order to develop a win–win situation between business and social organizations. However, the research also focuses on the differences between the three governments when applying CSR public policies. These divergences are based on the previous cultural and political framework, such as the welfare state typology, the organizational structures and the business and social and cultural background in each country. (shrink)

In this article I argue that characterizations of anger as a hostile emotion may be mistaken. My project is empirically informed and is partly descriptive, partly diagnostic. It is descriptive in that I am concerned with what anger is, and how it tends to manifest, rather than with what anger should be or how moral anger is manifested. The orthodox view on anger takes it to be, descriptively, an emotion that aims for retribution. This view fits well with anger being (...) a hostile emotion, as retribution is punitive. I will argue that a different view of anger deserves our attention. On this alternative view, anger aims for recognition of harms done, rather than for the punishment of those who have committed them. I argue that we have reason to favour a strong view that excludes retribution from anger’s main aims. In addition, I offer a diagnosis of the reasons that led the retributive view of anger to become, and remain, orthodoxy. This diagnosis provides indirect reason to give my descriptive proposal serious consideration, for it highlights that the orthodox view has dominated folk and philosophical conceptions of anger for reasons that do not speak in favour of the view’s veracity. The view that anger is a hostile emotion will therefore emerge as in need of serious scrutiny. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on (...) how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

How does violence shape citizens’ preferences for conflict termination? The existing literature has argued that violence either begets sympathy for more violence or drives support for making peace. Focusing on the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement, this article finds that victimhood dissociation strongly shapes these preferences. With victimhood dissociation, a discrepancy exists between objective and subjective victimization, and the effect of violence on peace attitudes depends on citizens’ subjective interpretations of their personal experiences of violence. Citizens who do not experience violence (...) often see themselves as victims of the conflict and vice versa. Victimhood dissociation is linked to cultural stereotypes of victimhood as portrayed in elite narratives concerning the conflict. In Colombia, political leaders framed victimhood around rurality, business entrepreneurship, kidnapping, extortion, and disappearance. In 2016, this widespread narrative was instrumental for politicians opposing the peace agreement. Citizens who disassociated their personal experiences of violence from their self-understanding as victims were instrumental to the failure of the peace plebiscite. (shrink)

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti-individualism is an implicit part (...) of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts. (shrink)

Our world is a world in which biotechnological tools are used by parents and healthcare providers to engineer future babies' bodies according to their wishes, a world in which there is no clear distinction between children as parents' "property" and children as autonomous beings, where children are exploited economically, politically, physically, and emotionally by adults, and where, in democratic countries, immigrants' children are taken prisoner and separated from their families because they dare to cross state borders. In such a world, (...) Claudia Wiesemann's book, Moral Equality, Bioethics, and the Child, is extremely relevant and important. In her work, the author seeks to establish moral equality for children and at the same time delineates crucial ethical foundations for our moral human existence. The reader is taken through a theoretical, practical, and emotional journey that brings together ethical and bio-ethical dilemmas from the perspectives of both the child and the adult. (shrink)

Our world is a world in which biotechnological tools are used by parents and healthcare providers to engineer future babies' bodies according to their wishes, a world in which there is no clear distinction between children as parents' "property" and children as autonomous beings, where children are exploited economically, politically, physically, and emotionally by adults, and where, in democratic countries, immigrants' children are taken prisoner and separated from their families because they dare to cross state borders. In such a world, (...) Claudia Wiesemann's book, Moral Equality, Bioethics, and the Child, is extremely relevant and important. In her work, the author seeks to establish moral equality for children and at the same time delineates crucial ethical foundations for our moral human existence. The reader is taken through a theoretical, practical, and emotional journey that brings together ethical and bio-ethical dilemmas from the perspectives of both the child and the adult. (shrink)

: Although "brain death" and the dead donor rule—i.e., patients must not be killed by organ retrieval—have been clinically and legally accepted in the U.S. as prerequisites to organ removal, there is little data about public attitudes and beliefs concerning these matters. To examine the public attitudes and beliefs about the determination of death and its relationship to organ transplantation, 1351 Ohio residents ≥18 years were randomly selected and surveyed using random digit dialing (RDD) sample frames. The RDD telephone survey (...) was conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviews. The survey instrument was developed from information provided by 12 focus groups and a pilot study of the questionnaire. Three scenarios based on hypothetical patients were presented: "brain dead," in a coma, or in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Respondents provided personal assessments of whether the patient in each scenario was dead and their willingness to donate that patient's organs in these circumstances. More than 98 percent of respondents had heard of the term "brain death," but only one-third (33.7%) believed that someone who was "brain dead" was legally dead. The majority of respondents (86.2%) identified the "brain-dead" patient in the first scenario as dead, 57.2 percent identified the patient in a coma as dead (Scenario 2), and 34.1 percent identified the patient in a PVS as dead (Scenario 3). Nearly one-third (33.5%) were willing to donate the organs of patients they classified as alive for at least one scenario, in seeming violation of the dead donor rule. Most respondents were not willing to violate the dead donor rule, although a substantial minority was. However, the majority of respondents were unaware, misinformed, or held beliefs that were not congruent with current definitions of "brain death." This study highlights the need for more public dialogue and education about "brain death" and organ donation. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new relational account of concepts and shows how it is particularly well suited to characterizing normative concepts. The key advantage of our ‘connectedness’ model is that it explains how subjects can share the same normative concepts despite radical divergences in the descriptive or motivational commitments they associate with them. The connectedness model builds social and historical facts into the foundations of concept identity. This aspect of the model, we suggest, reshapes normative epistemology and provides new resources (...) for a vindication of realism in ethics. (shrink)

It's widely accepted that social facts about an individual's linguistic community can affect both the reference of her words and the concepts those words express. Theorists sympathetic to the internalist tradition have sought to accommodate these social dependence phenomena without altering their core theoretical commitments by positing deferential reference-fixing criteria. In this paper, we sketch a different explanation of social dependence phenomena, according to which all concepts are individuated in part by causal-historical relations linking token elements of thought.

Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge noted, proper names can have predicative (...) uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge’s cases. In this paper I argue that the Predicate View of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist’s methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names—albeit fundamentally singular referential terms—express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and show how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names. (shrink)