To show that discrimination against the terminally ill is a real and worrisome phenomenon Reed presents four examples1. Here, I focus on the final two: right-to-try and right-to-die laws. I argue that they are not instances of discrimination, because they grant rights. Reed appears to have overlooked that rights differ from obligations in ways that leave his argumentation unsuccessful. According to the most prominent theory of rights, rights function to protect the personal interests of their holders.2 For that reason, strengthening (...) rights implies weakening discrimination. Granting women the right to vote by itself meant that they were being less discriminated against. Rights also fail to meet standardly accepted definitions of discrimination. As Reed explains, for discrimination to occur, it is necessary that a significant disadvantage is imposed on a socially salient group. Policies can impose disadvantages by being obligations. While rights sometimes enable disadvantages, they never impose them. More precisely, rights may entitle their holders to subject themselves to disadvantages. The right to try entitles the terminally ill to subject themselves to harms caused by investigational drugs. The right to die entitles the terminally ill to voluntarily subject themselves to the deprivation of life. Contrast this with a policy that requires the terminally ill to take investigational drugs. Such a policy would be discriminatory. Whether rights can nevertheless …. (shrink)

People frequently gesture when problem-solving, particularly on tasks that require spatial transformation. Gesture often facilitates task performance by interacting with internal mental representations, but how this process works is not well understood. We investigated this question by exploring the case of mental abacus, a technique in which users not only imagine moving beads on an abacus to compute sums, but also produce movements in gestures that accompany the calculations. Because the content of MA is transparent and readily manipulated, the task (...) offers a unique window onto how gestures interface with mental representations. We find that the size and number of MA gestures reflect the length and difficulty of math problems. Also, by selectively interfering with aspects of gesture, we find that participants perform significantly worse on MA under motor interference, but that perceptual feedback is not critical for success on the task. We conclude that premotor processes involved in the planning of gestures are critical to mental representation in MA. (shrink)

In this paper which consists of two parts (Teil I and Teil II) we champion Diophantus of Alexandria and Isabella BaÅ¡makova against Norbert Schappacher. In two publications ([Schappacher 1998a] and [Schappacher 1998b]) he puts forward inter alia two propositions: Questioning Diophantus’ originality he considers affirmatively the possibility that the Arithmetica are the joint work of a team of authors like Bourbaki. And he calls BaÅ¡makova’s claim (in [BaÅ¡makova 1972]) that Diophantus uses negative numbers, a nonsense , reproaching her for her (...) thoughtlessness . Teil I: First, we disprove Schappacher’s Bourbaki thesis. Second, we investigate the semantic meaning and historical significance of Diophantus’ keywords $ λvarepsilon tildeιψιζ and ὕπαρξιζ. Next, we discuss Schappacher’s epistemology of the history of mathematics and defend BaÅ¡makova’s methods. Finally we analyse in detail three problems from Diophantus’ Arithmetica (and their solutions) given by Thomas Heath and Helmuth Gericke as proof of the their claim that Diophantus did not use negative numbers. Teil II: In this Part, we give 33 places where Diophantus uses negative quantities as intermediate results; they appear as differences a − b of positive rational numbers, the subtrahend b being bigger than the minuend a; they each represent the (negative) basis ( πλvarepsilonυρacuteα ) of a square number ( τvarepsilonτρacuteαγω ν o ζ ), which is afterwards computed by the formula (a - b) 2 = a 2 + b 2 - 2ab $ . Finally, we report how the topic Diophantus and the negative numbers has been dealt with by translators and commentators from Maximus Planudes onwards. Und er kommt zu dem Ergebnis: ≪Nur ein Traum war das Erlebnis. Weil≫, so schlieβt er messerscharf, ≪nicht sein k a n n, was nicht sein d a r f.≫ CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN: Palmstrm. (shrink)

In this second part of “Negative Größen bei Diophant?” we start, as announced, by giving 33 places where Diophantus uses negative quantities as intermediate results; they appear as differences a − b of positive rational numbers, the subtrahend b being bigger than the minuend a; they each represent the (negative) basis $(\pi\lambda\varepsilon\upsilon\rho\acute{\alpha})$ of a square number $(\tau\varepsilon\tau\rho\acute{\alpha}\gamma\omega\nu o \zeta)$ , which is afterwards computed by the formula (a - b)2 = a 2 + b 2 - 2ab. Finally, we report (...) how the topic “Diophantus and the negative numbers” has been dealt with by translators and commentators from Maximus Planudes onwards. (shrink)

Reasoning about ulterior motives was investigated among children ages 6–10 years (total N = 119). In each of two studies, participants were told about children who offered gifts to peers who needed help. Each giver chose to present a gift in either a public setting, which is consistent with having an ulterior motive to enhance one's reputation, or in a private setting, which is not consistent with having an ulterior motive. In each study, the 6- to 7-year olds showed no (...) evidence of understanding that the public givers might have ulterior motives, but the 8- to 10-year olds rated the private givers more favorably. In , the older children were more likely than the younger children to refer to impression management when explaining their judgments of the givers. The younger children who mentioned impression management did so to justify a preference for public givers (e.g., by explaining that public givers are nicer because more of their peers will know that they are nice). Results from suggest that developmental change in children's reasoning about intentions and social outcomes contributes to their understanding of ulterior motives. (shrink)

Though there are holes in the theory of how children move through stages of numerical competence, the current approach offers the most promising avenue for characterizing changes in competence as children confront new mathematical concepts. Like the science of mathematics, children's discovery of number is rooted in intuitions about sets, and not purely in analytic truths.

Selected Logic Papers, long out of print and now reissued with eight additional essays, includes much of the author's important work on mathematical logic and ...

Explores the nature and types of mystical experience and discusses the value of mysticism for humanity.

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's _Physics, Metaphysics,_ and the _Nicomachean Ethics _)also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a (...) glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience. (shrink)

Some cognitive processes appear to have “phenomenal” properties that are directly revealed to the subject and not determined by physical properties. I suggest that the source of this appearance is the method by which our brain processes sensory information. The appearance is an illusion. Nonetheless, we are not mistaken when we judge that people sometimes fee lpain.

"More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from -- how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions -- Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today -- hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like biological life, (...) evolve? How do new industries, and the economy itself, emerge from technologies? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology that gives answers to these questions. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress. Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to "thinking outside the box," or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces -- themselves technologies -- that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries and combine, morph, and combine again to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms -- it creates itself from itself; all technologies are descended from earlier technologies. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, and writing in wonder fully engaging and clear prose, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of 'new paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed studies of (...) the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his 'foes' or his 'fans' claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of 'incommensurability', and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology. (shrink)

Nudging works through dispositions to decide with specific heuristics, and has three component parts. A nudge is a feature of an environment that enables such a disposition; a person is nudged when such a disposition is triggered; and a person performs a nudged action when such a disposition manifests in action. This analysis clarifies an autonomy-based worry about nudging as used in public policy or for private profit: that a person’s ability to reason well is undermined when she is nudged. (...) Reasoning well is a component of self-guidance, which is an aspect of autonomy and so something there is reason to promote, preserve, or respect. However, a person can reason well when she is nudged: Many of these heuristics are good rules to reason with, and she can be flexible with respect to them when she takes there to be a better way to reason. Along the way, this paper uncovers several design specifications for responsible nudging, and discusses open empirical questions. However, nudging’s being compatible with reasoning well crystallizes a distinct worry about manipulation: that nudge designers can rely on nudged people guiding themselves toward the designers’ own ends. Manipulation of this sort exploits one aspect of autonomy (namely, self-guidance) to undermine autonomy in other respects. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and debate (...) the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

_Selections_ seeks to provide an accurate and readable translation that will allow the reader to follow Aristotle's use of crucial technical terms and to grasp the details of his argument. Unlike anthologies that combine translations by many hands, this volume includes a fully integrated set of translations by a two-person team. The glossary--the most detailed in any edition--explains Aristotle's vocabulary and indicates the correspondences between Greek and English words. Brief notes supply alternative translations and elucidate difficult passages.