"Does God Take Naps? answers questions such as Does God live in a house? Does God have a family? How can I talk to God? Does God have a nickname? How does God talk to me? How old is God? Does God go to church?"--Amazon.com.

A child sees all the things God has made, but wants to see God in person.

In this paper, I argue that Plotinus offers us a new and interesting account of self-intellection. It is an account which is informed to some extent by a dilemma that Sextus Empiricus raised about the intellect being to apprehend itself. The significance of Sextus' dilemma is that it sets out the framework within which such a cognitive activity is to be dealt with, namely the intellect must apprehend itself qua part or qua whole, both of which according to him are (...) impossible. Plotinus, I think, successfully gets around this dilemma and is able to explain how the intellect can think itself qua whole. In the process of doing so, he offers an account of self-intellection in which the thinking subject or thinker becomes active in terms of generating its intellectual content, namely itself; a move which is a break from the traditional Platonic/Aristotelian account of the intellect. The paper itself is set up as follows. I start by mentioning the dilemma which Sextus raises about self-intellection. Then I attempt, through an analysis of the noetic intellect's structure, to show how Plotinus is able to offer an account of self-intellection in terms of whole apprehending whole. I conclude with Plotinus' analysis of the light analogy as a means of explaining how this intellectual process works. (shrink)

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As zoos have developed more successful captive breeding programs, they now face a question of what to do about “surplus” animals. One strategy used by European zoos in recent years has been to allow animals to breed freely, then kill unwanted offspring. I argue that this strategy wrongs the animals in question and that the justifications that have been offered for the practice are inadequate. I provide background on the practice, discuss the moral status of animals and potential grounds for (...) the prima facie duty not to kill, and then examine and ultimately dismiss justifications for killing in this case. (shrink)

Targeted killings have traditionally been viewed as a dirty tactic, even within war. However, I argue that just combatants actually have a prima facie duty to use targeted strikes against military and political leadership rather than conventional methods of fighting. This is because the leaders of a military engaging in aggression are typically responsible for the wrongful harms they threaten, whereas significant numbers of their solders usually will not be. Conventional warfare imposes significant risks on soldiers who are not liable (...) to be killed, violating their rights. Narrowly targeted strikes frequently provide a less-wrongful alternative. Consequently, there is a prima facie duty to conduct such strikes, and to exercise “due care” if engagement with conventional forces becomes necessary. (shrink)

We have a reason to pursue good patterns of reasoning in the determination of the means to the satisfaction of our desires. To deny this, it seems, would be to turn our backs on rationality. Furthermore, we would agree that we all have the same reason to do so. Is this reason internal or external? If external reasons are incoherent, as Bernard Williams claims, what choice do we have but to assume that it is internal? ;If we assume that it (...) is internal, however, we run into difficulties. How does the internalist explain the fact that all individuals have the same reason to pursue good patterns of reasoning? She could argue as Williams does, and claim that every rational deliberator, by virtue of being a rational deliberator, has a desire to be rationally and factually correctly informed. If she is right, all rational deliberators have an internal reason to strive towards soundness and completeness. I show that this argument fails. There are other arguments available to the internalist. I argue, however, that they all result in the necessity of acknowledging a third class of reasons, non-contingent reasons. ;Non-contingent reasons are a bit like external reasons and a bit like internal reasons. On the one hand, they resemble external reasons, for they recommend actions independently of the particular desires that we happen to have. On the other hand, however, non-contingent reasons resemble internal reasons, for neither non-contingent reasons nor internal reasons recommend actions independently of the efficacy of those actions to satisfy our desires. Even so, non-contingent reasons are very different from internal reasons. Internal reason statements ten us what we ought to do in order to satisfy a particular desire; their truth therefore depends upon the content of an individual's desires. Non-contingent reasons ten us what we ought to do in order to be a reliable and efficient desire satisfier; their truth depends upon whether the recommended action is a means to the satisfaction of all of our desires. (shrink)

There are times when a curiously odd relic of language presents us with a thread, which when pulled, reveals deep and general facts about human language. This paper unspools such a case. Prior to 1930, English speakers uniformly preferred male-before-female word order in conjoined nouns such asuncles and aunts; nephews and nieces; men and women. Since then, at least a half dozen items have systematically reversed their preferred order (e.g.,aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews) while others have not (men and (...) women). We review evidence that the unusual reversals began withmother and dad(dy)and spread to semantically and morphologically related binomials over a period of decades. The present work proposes that three aspects ofcognitive accessibilitycombine to quantify the probability of A&B order: (1) the relative accessibility of the A&B terms individually, (2) competition from B&A order, and critically, (3) cluster strength (i.e., similarity to related A'&B' cases). The emergent cluster of female-first binomials highlights the influence of semantic neighborhoods in memory retrieval. We suggest that cognitive accessibility can be used to predict the word order of both familiar and novel binomials generally, as well as the diachronic change focused on here. (shrink)

I describe and articulate the merits of an elegant supplemental exercise that I call “Philosophy in the Wild” (PW), which has students initiating a philosophical dialogue outside the classroom and critically reflecting on the results. The PW exercise is especially effective if used to reinforce philosophic texts which have dialogue as their form or as their subject matter (or both)—for instance, Plato’s Apology and Meno. However, the PW exercise is also an engaging, effective way simply to introduce students to the (...) practice and the value of philosophy. (shrink)

I present and evaluate the prospects of the biosemantic program, understood as a philosophical attempt to explain the mind’s origins by appealing to something that non-minded organisms and minded organisms have in common: representational capacity. I develop an analogy with ancient attempts to account for the origins of change, clarify the biosemantic program’s aims and methods, and then distinguish two importantly different forms of objection, a priori and a posteriori. I defend the biosemantic program from a priori objections on the (...) grounds that the standard of explanation presupposed by them is inappropriate and leads to absurdities if consistently applied. Once the way is cleared of a priori objections, the success of biosemantics turns on the strength of a posteriori objections, that is, on the program’s empirical adequacy. Here, its prospects are less clear, but I offer reasons, by analogy with chemical combination and other everyday phenomena, to think that minded beings and their representational capacities might well have their origin and explanation in non-minded beings. An evolutionary origin and explanation of mind is plausible, at least as far as naturalistic accounts and explanations go. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Consensus has it that Putnam-Burge style arguments for content-externalism do not strengthen the case for vehicle-externalism, i.e., the thesis that some mental states include as their parts notebooks, iPhones, and other extra-bodily phenomena. Rowlands and Sprevak, among others, argue that vehicle-externalism gets stronger support from Clark and Chalmers’s parity principle and functionalism, generally. I contest this assessment and thereby give reason to reconsider the support that content-externalism provides the extended mind thesis: although content-externalism does not entail vehicle-externalism, as Rowlands (...) argues, neither does functionalism. The functionalist cannot reject the content-externalist argument for vehicle-externalism on these grounds without undercutting her own.Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

We focus here on high-risk pediatric research with the prospect of direct benefit and point out some aspects that have raised significant debate. In particular, we call attention to disagreements related to two essential aspects of this type of research: (i) determining what constitutes a “prospect of direct benefit” in phase I trials that involve gene transfer technologies and (ii) assessing when in these trials the risk is justified by the anticipated benefit to the participant children. Although much of our (...) discussion is applicable to other types of high-risk pediatric trials, as an example of the dilemma this type of research poses we use pediatric trials that involve gene transfer technologies. We focus on clinical trials for late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (LINCL). Exploring the ethical implications of some of these disagreements might identify resources for determining how best to deal with the ethical concerns at stake in high-risk pediatric research. We thus offer some recommendations for responding to these concerns. (shrink)

Han Fei was a fierce general in the anti-Confucian struggle of the late Warring States period and was also an outstanding pre-Ch'in Legalist theoretician. Han Fei Tzu, this piece of writing, which was critical of Confucius and full of a violently militant spirit, vividly recorded the course of the difficult combat of the landowning class which led to its victory over the slave-owning class. It summed up the historical experience of the struggle between the Confucian and Legalist lines during the (...) Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods and expounded the theoretical foundation for establishing the unified, centralized feudal state. It was a work that crystallized Legalist thought. If we want to thoroughly criticize the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius advertised by Lin Piao, scientifically analyze the progressive role of the Legalists in history, and critically sum up the historical experience of the Legalists' criticism of Confucius, then it is helpful to make a modest study of Han Fei Tzu from the point of view of class analysis. (shrink)

Blair presumes the validity of the fluid-crystallized model throughout his article. Two comparative evaluations recently demonstrated that this presumption can be challenged. The fluid-crystallized model offers little to the understanding of the structural manifestation of general intelligence and other more specific abilities. It obscures important issues involving the distinction of pervasive learning disabilities (low general intelligence) from specific, content-related disabilities that impede the development of particular skills. (Published Online April 5 2006).

This essay explores the connection between representation and explanation in the sciences. I suggest that scientific representation schemes be viewed as pragmatic tools for acquiring the sort of articulated awareness that is the hallmark of nontrivial knowledge. Crystal field theory in chemistry illustrates this perspective. Certain representations achieve the status of being paradigmatically explanatory, thereby shaping models of intelligibility. In turn, these explanatory preferences serve largely to define and differentiate disciplinary communities by implicitly endorsing particular epistemic aims and values. (...) In this way, the pragmatic nature of explanatory discourse effectively grants its intellectual utility. (shrink)

An in-situ transmission electron microscopy straining technique has been used to investigate the dynamics of dislocation-defect interactions in ion-irradiated copper and the subsequent formation of defect-free channels. Defect removal frequently required interaction with multiple dislocations, although screw dislocations were more efficient at annihilating defects than edge dislocations were. The defect pinning strength was determined from the dislocation curvature prior to breakaway and exhibited values ranging from 15 to 175 MPa. Pre-existing dislocations percolated through the defect field but did not show (...) long-range motion, indicating that they are not responsible for creating the defect-free channels and have a limited contribution to the total plasticity. Defect-free channels were associated with the movement of many dislocations, which originated from grain boundaries or regions of high stress concentration such as at a crack tip. These experimental results are compared with atomistic simulations of the interaction of partial dislocations with defects in copper and a dispersed-barrier-hardening crystal plasticity model to correlate the observations to bulk mechanical properties. (shrink)