Some time ago, John Perry argued that the content of an indexical belief, that is, a belief expressible with a sentence containing an indexical or demonstrative, cannot be a proposition. I consider several of his arguments for this view, and show that they can be extended to show that belief expressible with other non-indexical expressions such as natural kind terms and proper names presents the very same problem for the traditional picture. I then suggest that if indexical belief has any (...) special status, this is not because it has a special kind of content, but rather because action is impossible if agents do not have indexical belief. (shrink)

Since we explain behavior by ascribing intentional states to the agent, many philosophers have assumed that some guiding principle of folk psychology like [Intentional States and Actions] must be true. [Intentional States and Actions]: If A and B are different actions, then the agents performing them must differ in their intentional states at the time they are performed. Recent results in the physiology of vision present a prima facie problem for this principle. These results show that some visual information that (...) guides spatial manipulation and fine motor control is unavailable for verbal report. Plausibly, this information is not consciously available to the agent, and as such, not available to inform the content of intentional states. Thus, it is hard to see how every difference in action is subject to intentional explanation, as [Intentional States and Actions] requires. I articulate the prima facie problem and argue that the most plausible solution requires us to reject [Intentional States and Actions]. (shrink)

The Russellian approach to the semantics of attitude ascriptions faces a problem in explaining the robust speaker intuitions that it does not predict. A familiar response to the problem is to claim that utterances of attitude ascriptions may differ in their Gricean conversational implicatures. I argue that the appeal to Grice is ad hoc. First, we find that speakers do not typically judge an utterance false merely because it implicates something false. The apparent cancellability of the putative implicatures is irrelevant, (...) since cancellability does not indicate conversational implicature. Finally, the appeal assumes, implausibly, that ordinary speakers generally subscribe to a particular philosophical theory about belief. (shrink)

In Propositional Attitudes, Mark Richard claims that some natural and formal language sentences of the form(∀ x)(∀ y)(x = y → α → α [y/x])are false. He suggests a substitution for α that is sensitive to certain ancillary features of the variable letter as well as the assignment, and then argues that this substitution generates a false instance of the above-mentioned schema. I reject Richard's argument and argue further that the sentence is not an instance of that schema. I then (...) argue that his putative natural language example fails as well. Finally, I suggest that although Richard's mistake here does not present any technical problem for his semantics for attitude ascriptions, it undermines his claim that his semantic theory is better able to respect the surface form of attitude ascriptions in natural languages than competing theories. (shrink)

A familiar story about phenomenal knowledge likens it to indexical knowledge, i.e. knowledge about oneself typically expressed with sentences containing indexicals or demonstratives. The popularity of this sort of story owes in part to its promise of resolving some longstanding puzzles about phenomenal knowledge. One such puzzle arises from the compelling arguments that we can have full objective knowledge of the world while lacking some phenomenal knowledge. I argue that the widespread optimism about the indexical account on this score is (...) unwarranted. (shrink)

There is a traditional picture of belief, according to which someone's having a belief is that person's standing in a certain relation to an abstract object, a proposition. My dissertation examines the metaphysical demands that two problems for this picture of belief make on these abstract objects. The first problem comes to us from Frege's "On Sense and Reference," and the second concerns a certain sort of one's beliefs about oneself, which I call "indexical beliefs." ;Frege notes that someone can (...) believe that Hesperus is Hesperus without believing that Hesperus is Phosphorus. It is but a short step from Frege's observation to the claim that the sentence "A believes that Hesperus is Hesperus" could be true while "A believes that Hesperus is Phosphorus" is false. Quine has insisted that we cannot address this problem by taking either of these sentences to express a predication of the referent of both names, the planet Venus, as then both sentences would express the same predication of the same object, and this stands in evident tension with the fact that they can differ in truth value. In a recent response to Frege's problem, Mark Richard has taken exactly the route Quine has warned against. In my first chapter, I show that Richard's response is unsuccessful. I then consider the implications of the failure of his response on his proposed semantics for belief and the philosophical motivation he provides for it. I argue that his semantics for belief ascriptions stands in serious tension with its purported philosophical motivation. ;In the second and third chapters, I turn to the problem about indexical belief. The task of the second chapter is to identify this problem. To this end, I consider three of John Perry's arguments that the traditional picture of belief cannot accommodate indexical belief. I show that even if these arguments are sound, they give us no reason to think that the problem about indexical belief is in any way unique. I then suggest that there is a special problem about indexical belief, despite the failure of these three arguments to isolate it. Special difficulties attend an account of what it is to retain a tensed belief over time, and I suggest that the special problem about indexical belief is, in brief, a generalization of this problem about retention of tensed belief. ;In the third chapter, I raise the problem about indexical belief in a new way, as arising from a tension between several intuitively plausible claims about the relationship between beliefs and desires, on the one hand, and actions, on the other. This presentation of the problem brings out how the problem is special. I survey several solutions to this problem, including one due to Perry. I then argue that Perry's solution cannot characterize the specific kind of similarity between the beliefs of two different people who share an indexical belief. It allows too much to count as shared indexical belief. Thus Perry's solution inadequately addresses what I have suggested is the unique problem about indexical belief. Finally, I suggest that Frege's response to the problem I raise points the way towards an emendation of Perry's account that will enable it to suitably characterize the special way in which different people can share an indexical belief. (shrink)

The semantics of belief reports has recently received a great deal of attention. Speech reports have largely been left behind in this discussion. Here I extend a familiar recent account of attitude reports, the Russellian theory, to the special case of speech reports. I then consider how it compares to Davidson’s paratactic theory with respect to a few examples that raise special problems about speech reports. Neither theory accounts for everything we want to say about these cases. I suggest that (...) the problem lies in an assumption common to both theories, that in reporting what others say, we aim to represent what was said exactly as the original speaker represented it, in so far as this is possible. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the familiar view that the problem of the essential indexical is a merely technical problem, which can be solved through a straightforward revision of the familiar model of belief content. (The familiar model just says that the content of belief is a proposition.) I do not object to these technical fixes, but I think they leave some questions unanswered. Specifically, they deny us an attractive account of what it is for different people to (...) completely agree on their conception of what the world is like, according to which complete agreement consists in having beliefs with the same propositional content, but they do not give us anything to replace it with. Here, I consider whether we can say anything general about the relation between my beliefs and your beliefs (including, of course, our indexical beliefs), when you and I completely agree about what the world is like. (shrink)

Blurb & Contents Readings from Physics Today With over 300 photographs and illustrations, this volume is a valuable library reference, a useful supplementary text for a wide range of courses, and stimulating leisure reading for physicists and non- physicists alike.

International Law in Context is a pedagogy-forward textbook. It reflects the recent paradigm shift in legal education, which focuses more on what students actually learn rather than the material to which they are exposed. The text aims to prepare the next generation of U.S. lawyers to engage with our interconnected world and to critically evaluate the U.S.'s role within the international legal order. The work is divided into three parts that accomplish these goals. Part One lays a foundation. It covers (...) the various actors within the system, the theories that help explain their behavior, and the principles and sources of law they create. Part Two turns to the fora that define and support the international order, the historical and political contexts that impacted their design, and their efficacy. Part Three is a capstone section that asks students to weave together everything they have learned in Parts One and Two. Students will engage in normative development regarding climate change, including the existing international treaty regime and U.S. implementation options, and the law of war in the modern age. The cornerstone of this book is its organization. The text groups material into conceptual frameworks that promote understanding and retention. For example, rather than consider the various dispute resolution fora in isolation, Part Two asks students to consider them in the context of what types of disputes arise and what legal rules can be employed to resolve them in various international and domestic fora. The institutions also are presented in chronology. In this way, students are encouraged to chart the developmental progression and to make connections and comparisons between various institutions. The use of conceptual frameworks continues within each part. For example, Chapter Six covers the sovereign State as a conflict resolution forum. Under this umbrella, the author discusses (a) State Jurisdiction; (b) The Reception of International Law into the Domestic Sphere; (c) The Qualification as a State Forum or State Litigant (i.e., Recognition of States & Governments); and (d) Protections Afforded Within the Forum: Sovereign, Diplomatic, and Consular Immunity. A typical coursebook might locate this material in four different chapters. The conceptual framework approach, however, allows students to see the big picture and the relationship between concepts. In addition to the frameworks, there are several other innovative pedagogical devices that support student learning. There are Foundation Questions that initially direct readers through the material and cumulatively help students confirm whether they have grasped key takeaways from each section. There also are Assessment Sets in each section, which provide students with immediate opportunities to apply material and gauge their understanding, and "Why Is This Important (a/k/a WITI Moment)" prompts designed to delve deeper into the underpinnings and consequences of various rules. Finally, there are directed reading notes before some more complex readings and margin annotations to keep readers oriented. (shrink)

Historical injustice and global inequality are basic problems embedded in territorial rights. In Global Justice and Territory Cara Nine advances a general theory of territorial rights adapting a theoretical framework from natural law theory to ground all territorial claims.

Predictive genetic testing is now routinely offered to asymptomatic adults at risk for genetic disease. However, testing of minors at risk for adult-onset conditions, where no treatment or preventive intervention exists, has evoked greater controversy and inspired a debate spanning two decades. This review aims to provide a detailed longitudinal analysis and concludes by examining the debate's current status and prospects for the future. Fifty-three relevant theoretical papers published between 1990 and December 2010 were identified, and interpretative content analysis was (...) employed to catalogue discrete arguments within these papers. Novel conclusions were drawn from this review. While the debate's first voices were raised in opposition of testing and their arguments have retained currency over many years, arguments in favour of testing, which appeared sporadically at first, have gained momentum more recently. Most arguments on both sides are testable empirical claims, so far untested, rather than abstract ethical or philosophical positions. The dispute, therein, lies not so much in whether minors should be permitted to access predictive genetic testing but whether these empirical claims on the relative benefits or harms of testing should be assessed. (shrink)

In Sharing Territories, Cara Nine defends a river model of territorial rights. On a river model, groups are assumed to be interdependent and overlapping. Drawing on natural law philosophy, Nine's theory argues for the establishment of foundational territories around geographical areas like rivers.

Ecological refugees are expected to make up an increasing percentage of overall refugees in the coming decades as predicted climate change related disasters will displace millions of people. In this essay, I focus on those rights ecological refugees may claim on the basis of collective self-determination. To this end, I will focus on a few specific cases that I call cases of ‘ecological refugee states’. Tuvalu, the Maldives, and to a certain extent, Bangladesh are predicted to be ecological refugee states (...) in the near future. These are states whose entire (or close to it) geographical territory is predicted to be lost to rising sea levels; the collective body of the people will itself become an ecological refugee.The question is: what may the people of an ecological refugee state legitimately claim on the basis of their right to self-determination? Should we redraw state borders to accommodate a New Tuvalu? I argue that a plausible position regarding territorial rights is that when (1) a people clearly is (or recently was) self-determining and has a legitimate claim to continue to be self-determining, and (2) the self-determination of a people is existentially threatened because the people lacks territorial rights, that (3) the people becomes a candidate for sovereign over a new territory. The result is that existing state borders may need to change to accommodate something like a New Tuvalu. To generate these results on behalf of ecological refugee states, I examine the principles of the system of territorial states. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land, it is possible that it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. This paper is dedicated mainly to adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use in territorial rights theory. (shrink)

This commentary highlights the observation that social motivation is usually an imprecisely specified construct. We suggest four social motivation conceptualizations across levels of analysis and explore where the target article situates among these. We then offer theoretical and practical guidance for operationalization and measurement of social motivation to support more comprehensive future research on this complex construct in the autism literature.

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude? This claim is often assumed to be true in territorial rights theory. And if this claim is justified, a state may have a prima facie right to unil...

In ‘What’s Wrong with Colonialism,’ Lea Ypi argues that the wrong of colonialism can be expressed as procedural wrongs, not as wronging territorial rights. On her view, colonial practices went wrong in two ways: they forced residents into political associations, and the terms of the political association were not established through equal and reciprocal negotiations. I argue that because Ypi’s account successfully side-lines all but essential claims to territory, her theory ends up being vulnerable to an objection it means to (...) avoid. Historical residents may be subject to unequal treatment under newly formed political associations because their historical patterns of land use are not considered to have any independent moral weight. My analysis does not rely on any appeal to property or territorial rights. Instead, I appeal to pre-existing obligations holding between residents. (shrink)

Zifcak, Spencer Nobody at this conference should disagree that freedom of expression is a political principle of fundamental value.

Competition is pervasive in modern society, affecting work, education, and recreation. The question arises whether competition is consistent with scriptural teaching. The context for this enquiry is that Christians today disagree among themselves about whether Scripture has any normative content relating to competition. Some view competition as incompatible with Scripture, while for others it is compatible. On the basis of a given definition of competition, Christian contributions to the debate in the last decade are reviewed. Only six inputs were discovered, (...) with five arguing that Scripture takes no normative position toward competition. Most of this article is taken up with evaluating their cases that are found to be unpersuasive. A sixth paper claims that Scripture is incompatible with competition, examined in the penultimate section. From reviewing the six contributions to the debate, the conclusion is that that Scripture does not have a favorable attitude toward competition. (shrink)

Cooperation, meaning collaboration between people who assist each other to achieve common goals, is argued to be one of Jesus’ major normative themes. This proposal has not previously been made in Christian ethics. Jesus’ emphasis on cooperation occurs within His major undertaking, His practice of obedience to God. Outlined initially is the meaning of cooperation that aims for mutual help and partnership with others in a friendly, trusting and harmonious alliance. Following that, Jesus’ teachings relating to cooperation are assessed, as (...) interpreted by Biblical exegetes. These teachings include the Golden Rule, Jesus’ admonitions for forgiveness, the need for generosity, required relations between His disciples, and Jesus’ healings. In the penultimate section, objections to the extension of Jesus’ teachings on cooperation in the modern world are found to be unpersuasive. (shrink)

This book is an accessible, research-based introduction to behavioral ethics. Often ethics education is incomplete because it ignores how and why people make moral decisions. But using exciting new research from fields such as behavioral psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology, the study of behavioral ethics uncovers the common reasons why good people often screw up. Chapters coordinate with free online teaching resources from The University of Texas at Austin. Scientists have long studied the ways human beings make decisions, but (...) only recently have researchers begun to focus specifically on ethical decision making. Unlike philosophy and religion, which aim to tell people how to think and act about various moral issues, behavioral ethics research reveals the factors that influence how people really make moral decisions. Most people get into ethical trouble for doing obviously wrong things. Aristotle cannot help, but learning about behavioral ethics can. By supplementing traditional approaches to teaching ethics with a clear, accessible, detailed, and research-based introduction to behavioral ethics, beginners can quickly become familiar with the important elements of this new field. This book includes the bonus of being coordinated with Ethics Unwrapped-a free, online, educational resource featuring award-winning videos and teaching materials on a variety of behavioral ethics (and general ethics) topics. This book is a useful supplement for virtually every ethics course, and important in any course where incorporating practical ethics in an engaging manner is paramount. The content applies to every discipline-journalism, business ethics, medicine, legal ethics, and others-because its chief subject is the nature of moral decision making. Because the book is research-based yet accessibly written with interesting studies, it could be used in high schools, colleges, graduate schools, and industry. (shrink)

PurposeWeb accessibility is the practice of making web sites accessible to people, such as the disabled, who are using more than just traditional web browsers to access the internet. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to overview web accessibility and to highlight the ethics of web accessibility from a managerial perspective.Design/methodology/approachTo that end, this paper reviews related literature, highlights relevant public policy, discusses web accessibility from a systems development perspective, and concludes with a discussion of web accessibility with respect (...) to different ethical theories.FindingsThe findings take the form of a tutorial that highlights how to address web accessibility projects. The findings also examine web accessibility projects as they relate to well‐known ethical theories. Additionally, the findings also incorporate ethical opinions from web designers who have completed web accessibility projects in the past.Originality/valueThe paper makes several contributions to the existing literatures on web accessibility and ethics. An important contribution is that the paper is the first tutorial on web accessibility that also examines the topic through the lens of ethical theories. In addition to the tutorial, the paper reports on the opinions of web designers who have worked on web accessibility projects in the past. (shrink)

Drinking water is an important health behavior to support overall child health. Research indicates that children are consuming too little water and too many sugary drinks. Overconsumption of sugary drinks increases child risk for the epidemics of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases like type-II diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Increasing access to appealing, low-cost drinking water in schools and childcare where children spend much of their time supports efforts to reduce sugary drink consumption. Drinking water infrastructure is key to water (...) access in childcare and schools. In 2012-2013, almost one-third of permanent U.S. school buildings had plumbing systems in fair or poor condition, and almost 40 percent had major renovations or repairs planned.3 Basic plumbing standards for new construction and major renovations or repairs are contained in state and local plumbing codes, and many of these codes are derived from model codes established by private organizations. This article describes the model code process and intervention points where the public health community can work to improve plumbing standards in school buildings and childcare centers. (shrink)

I will discuss a variety of cases such that the subject's believing truly is somewhat of an accident, but less so than in a Gettier case. In each case, this is because her reasons are not ultimately undefeated full stop, but they are ultimately undefeated with certain qualifications. For example, the subject's reasons might be ultimately defeated considered in themselves but ultimately undefeated considered as a proper part of an inference to the best explanation that is undefeated without qualification. In (...) each section of the paper, I consider different qualifications and show how in each case we get an epistemic standing I call “coach-class knowledge”. First-class knowledge requires justifying reasons that are undefeated without qualification. Coach-class knowledge only requires qualified lack of defeat. I will use this distinction to bring debates over knowledge from falsehood and fake barns to an ecumenical resolution. In both cases, the subject enjoys coach-class rather than first-class knowledge. I will also show that the defeasible reasoning tradition can better account for graded accidental truth than safety theories. (shrink)

We report on an effort to characterize (changes in) teachers’ and school and district leaders’ race consciousness within their visions of equitable mathematics instruction. We analyzed interviews conducted over multiple years within a project in an urban school district in the U.S. that focused on racism and racial equity in secondary mathematics and included multi-week professional learning opportunities for teachers during the months between school years. Our analysis yielded a 4-level trajectory modelling the development of race consciousness in participants’ discourse. (...) Distinctions across levels pertain to the presence of race in individuals’ discourse, the directness with which they talk about race, and the extent to which they locate sources of an historical accumulation of racial inequity within systems. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the reception and use of Aristotle’s four causes by twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin Christian theologians, primarily at Paris. I pay special attention to the early thirteenth century, when Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy were officially prohibited in the French capital. By looking at a wide range of texts from both prominent and obscure theologians, I hope to contribute to an expanded view of the ways in which intellectuals in the Latin west received and appropriated Aristotle’s (...) ideas. (shrink)

Objective Standards of care regarding obstetric management of life-threatening anomalies are not defined. It is hypothesised that physicians' management of these pregnancies is variable and influenced by demographic factors. Design A questionnaire was mailed to members of the Society of Maternal–Fetal Medicine with valid US addresses assessing obstetric management of both ‘uniformly lethal’ (eg, anencephaly, renal agenesis) and ‘uniformly severe, commonly lethal’ (eg, trisomy 13 and 18) anomalies. Respondents were asked to answer as if not limited by state/institutional restrictions. Fisher's (...) exact or χ2 tests were used as appropriate and correction made for multiple comparisons in analyses that were not prespecified. Results The response rate was 36% (732/2038). Nearly 100% of respondents discuss termination for both uniformly and commonly lethal anomalies. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for obstetric non-intervention 99% of providers would comply for either uniformly or commonly lethal anomalies. The majority ‘encourage’ such management, but some were non-directive or discouraged this management. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for full obstetric intervention the majority of respondents was willing to comply for both uniformly (71%) and commonly (82%) lethal anomalies. While most practitioners ‘discouraged’ full intervention, some were non-directive or encouraged this management. Demographics and severity of anomaly influenced counselling. Conclusion Discrepancies exist regarding the management of life-threatening fetal anomalies. Patients may be offered different options based on practitioner demographics. The majority of physicians comply with patient wishes. Differences were noted when comparing the management of lethal with that of severe commonly lethal anomalies, suggesting that practitioners make a distinction when counselling patients. (shrink)

This essay defends a strong right against displacement as part of a basic individual right to secure access to one’s home. The analysis is purposefully situated within the difficult context of climate change adaptation policies. Under increasing environmental pressures, especially regarding water security, there are weighty reasons motivating the forced displacement of persons—to safeguard water resources or prevent water-related disasters. Even in these pressing circumstances, I argue, individuals have weighty rights to secure access to their homes. I explain how the (...) home provides a functional context for conditions of autonomous agency. Being coerced from the home disrupts and subverts the conditions necessary for autonomous processes. I conclude by suggesting that the right to the home could be a foundational element of territorial rights. (shrink)

In ‘The Genesis of a False Dichotomy: A Critique of Conceptual Alienation’, I locate the origin of the conceptualist-realist debate in the medieval debate between nominalists, realists, and conceptualists; subsequently, I trace the development of realism and conceptualism through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Hegel’s critique of the Kantian concept in his Logic, but conclude – alongside Sohn-Rethel – that the Hegelian concept failed to capture that all things, including concepts, appear dichotomous under capitalism. Next, I detail the ways (...) in which the division of word and thing mimics the mutual exclusivity of exchange and use. Finally, I claim that Marxist Psychoanalysis has the unique capacity to expose the connection between the concept, the objective world, and the individual; and in turn, reveal our subjective participation in the creation of the objective ‘terms’ of our lives. (shrink)

Reasons rationalize beliefs. Reasons, when all goes well, turn true beliefs into knowledge. I am interested in the relationship between these aspects of reasons. Without a proper understanding of their relationship, the theory of knowledge will be less illuminating than it ought to be. I hope to show that previous accounts have failed to account for this relationship. This has resulted in a tendency to focus on justification rather than knowledge. It has also resulted in many becoming skeptical about the (...) prospects for an analysis of knowledge. The skepticism is misplaced and the tendency can be fixed without sacrificing any insights. The solution is to see how good reasons (in a sense to be articulated) are apparent (in a sense to be articulated) to the knowing subject. Once this claim is unpacked, we see that it is an illuminating analysis of knowledge in terms of distinct but intimately related aspects of epistemic assessment. It helps us see the value of knowledge (over and above true belief) and it affords us a unified, “reasons-first” metaepistemology. The resulting picture is neither a familiar kind of internalism or externalism. (shrink)

This article examines theories of ocean rights based on the works of Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf. Grotius's object‐centred view uses features of the natural world to justify claims to external objects. I show that Grotius's view is inadequate, because it relies on an outdated claim that oceanic resources are sufficiently abundant for anybody to use. Further, adaptations of his view are wanting, because they either rely on arbitrary distinctions or disregard the values of cultural minorities. Pufendorf's relational view (...) constructs rights through the exercise of human will. While Pufendorf believes that agreements create rights, he also argues that property rights can be unilaterally acquired from the commons without express consent from others. The relational view is a viable alternative to the object‐centred view, because it both delimits territorial claims over the ocean to a ‘modest’ size and also respects cultural variability. A major aim of this article is to present Pufendorf's theory of territorial rights extended over oceans and to demonstrate how it is useful for assessing contemporary disputes. In the final sections, I apply the relational view to Canadian claims to the Northwest Passage, and I also sketch implications for assessing expanding claims to the seabed. (shrink)

Many philosophers have noted that normative error theorists appear to be committed to saying ‘Error theory is true, but I have no reason to believe it’, which seems paradoxical. In defence of error...

In this paper, I critically examine an important premise in theories of global distributive justice that, despite its widespread influence, has remained largely unexamined. This is the claim that state borders are morally arbitrary with respect to a just distribution of goods. I examine two common arguments for this claim, the argument that state borders are historically unjust and therefore morally arbitrary; and the argument first made by Charles Beitz that the conditions of a fair, hypothetical social contract would not (...) include knowledge of one's location with respect to the distribution of natural resources between state borders. I argue that there are good reasons to reject both arguments. Beitz's immense contribution to international justice can be gauged by the fact that it is difficult to find a contemporary work on global justice that does not reference his arguments in Political Theory and International Relations . Although some authors find Beitz's cosmopolitan theory objectionable, no author has, to my knowledge, criticized Beitz's pivotal arguments that our placement in the distribution of natural resources is morally arbitrary. The aim of this paper is to do just that. (shrink)