Until recently, retention of introns in mature mRNAs has been regarded as a consequence of mis‐splicing. Intron‐retaining transcripts are thought to be non‐functional because they are readily degraded by nonsense‐mediated decay. However, recent advances in next‐generation sequencing technologies have enabled the detection of numerous transcripts that retain introns. As we review herein, intron‐retaining mRNAs play an essential conserved role in normal physiology and an emergent role in diverse diseases. Intron retention should no longer be overlooked as a key mechanism that (...) independently reduces gene expression in normal biology. Exploring its contribution to the development and/or maintenance of diseases is of increasing importance. (shrink)

BackgroundThe death of a loved one can trigger a range of responses, including painful thoughts and emotions, as well as positive changes, such as post-traumatic growth. To understand more about the relationship between these outcomes this study explored the co-occurrence of depression, anxiety and PTG among a group of bereaved Chinese adults.MethodsData were collected from 194 participants, who had lost a first-degree relative. Latent class analysis was used to analyze the data to identify subgroups of participants with shared symptom profiles.ResultsThree (...) classes were identified: a Growth class, a Depression/Anxiety/Growth class and a Depression/Anxiety class. Marital status, social support, close relationship with the deceased and witnessing the suffering of the deceased were identified as differential predictors of class membership.ConclusionThe findings contribute to our understanding of the potentially wide ranging impacts of bereavement and highlight the important role of stressor characteristics and support and in influencing impairment and positive outcomes. (shrink)

Recent debates within the autism advocacy community have raised difficult questions about who can credibly act as a representative of a particular population and what responsibilities that...

In recent months, pharmaceutical manufacturers have brought legal challenges to a provision of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) empowering the federal government to negotiate the prices Medicare pays for certain prescription medications. One key argument made in these filings is that price negotiation is a “taking” of property and violates the Takings Clause of the US Constitution. Through original case law and health policy analysis, we show that government price negotiation and even price regulation of goods and services, including (...) patented goods, are constitutional under the Takings Clause. Finding that the IRA violates the Takings Clause would radically upend settled constitutional law and jeopardize the US’s most important state and federal health care programs. (shrink)

The effective altruism movement (EA) is one of the most influential philosophically savvy movements to emerge in recent years. Effective Altruism has historically been dedicated to finding out what charitable giving is the most overall-effective, that is, the most effective at promoting or maximizing the impartial good. But some members of EA want the movement to be more inclusive, allowing its members to give in the way that most effectively promotes their values, even when doing so isn’t overall-effective. When we (...) examine what it means to give according to one’s values, I argue, we will see that this is both inconsistent with what EA is like now and inconsistent with its central philosophical commitment to an objective standard that can be used to critically analyze one’s giving. While EA is not merely synonymous with act utilitarianism, it cannot be much more inclusive than it is right now. (shrink)

When we can’t live up to the ultimate standards of morality, how can moral theory give us guidance? We can distinguish between ideal and non-ideal theory to see that there are different versions of the voluntarist constraint, ‘ought implies can.’ Ideal moral theory identifies the best standard, so its demands are constrained by one version. Non-ideal theory tells us what to do given our psychological and motivational shortcomings and so is constrained by others. Moral theory can now both provide an (...) ultimate standard and give us guidance; this view also gives us new insights into demandingness and blame. (shrink)

How are we to understand the phenomenology of imagining? Attempts to answer this question often invoke descriptors concerning the “vivacity” or “vividness” of our imaginative states. Not only are particular imaginings often phenomenologically compared and contrasted with other imaginings on grounds of how vivid they are, but such imaginings are also often compared and contrasted with perceptions and memories on similar grounds. Yet however natural it may be to use “vividness” and cognate terms in discussions of imagination, it does not (...) take much reflection to see that these terms are ill understood. In this paper, I review both some relevant empirical literature as well as the philosophical literature attempt to get a handle on what it could mean, in an imaginative context, to talk of vividness. As I suggest, this notion ultimately proves to be so problematic as to be philosophically untenable. (shrink)

In this book, early readers will discover the concept of opposites using new and old objects all around them! Using engaging and colorful photographs, simple sentences, and exciting sight words, young readers will enjoy learning about new and old things, while practicing their reading skills. This book also includes a page for caregivers and teachers that suggests guiding questions to help aid in reading comprehension.

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the _Analects_. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows _whom _he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him (...) and the _Analects'_ authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way _why _pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical exploration of disorientation and its significance for action. Disorientations are human experiences of losing one's bearings, such that life is disrupted and it is not clear how to go on. In the face of life experiences like trauma, grief, illness, migration, education, queer identification, and consciousness raising, individuals can be deeply disoriented. These and other disorientations are not rare. Although disorientations can be common and powerful parts of individuals' lives, they remain uncharacterized by Western philosophers, (...) and overlooked by ethicists.Disorientations can paralyze, overwhelm, embitter, and misdirect moral agents, and moral philosophy and motivational psychology have important insights to offer into why this is. More perplexing are the ways disorientations may prompt improved moral action.Ami Harbin draws on first person accounts, philosophical texts, and qualitative and quantitative research to show that in some cases of disorientation, individuals gain new forms of awareness of political complexity and social norms, and new habits of relating to others and an unpredictable moral landscape. She then argues for the moral and political promise of these gains. A major contention of the book is that disorientations have 'non-resolutionary effects': they can help us act without first helping us resolve what to do. In exploring these possibilities, Disorientation and Moral Life contributes to philosophy of emotions, moral philosophy, and political thought from a distinctly feminist perspective. It makes the case for seeing disorientations as having the power to motivate profound and long-term shifts in moral and political action. A feminist re-envisioning of moral psychology provides the framework for understanding how they do so. (shrink)

Those who aim to give an account of modal knowledge face two challenges: the integration challenge of reconciling an account of what is involved in knowing modal truths with a plausible story about how we can come to know them, and the reliability challenge of giving a plausible account of how we could have evolved a reliable capacity to acquire modal knowledge. I argue that recent counterfactual and dispositional accounts of modal knowledge cannot solve these problems regarding specifically metaphysical modal (...) truths—leaving us with the threat of skepticism about large portions of metaphysics, and certain other areas of philosophy. I argue, however, that both of these problems look insuperable only if we assume that metaphysical modal discourse serves a describing or tracking function. If we adopt instead a normativist approach to metaphysical modal discourse, which sees the basic function of modal discourse as giving us perspicuous ways of conveying, reasoning with, and renegotiating semantic rules, the problems show up very differently. The modal normativist can give a plausible response to both of the classic problems of how we can come to know metaphysical modal truths. (shrink)

SALMON A, BROWNE AJ, and PEDERSON A. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 336–345 ‘Now we call it research’: participatory health research involving marginalized women who use drugsIn this paper, we discuss and analyse the strategies employed and challenges encountered when conducting a recent feminist participatory action research study with highly marginalized women who were illicit drug users in an inner city area of Vancouver, Canada. Through an analysis of the political economy of participatory praxis within current neoliberal contexts, we focus on (...) three main areas: (i) reconceptualizing the pragmatics of participation; (ii) the microeconomic implications of participatory research, including ethical issues in payment for research participation; and (iii) the value and limits of using research as a tool for activism and empowerment. We conclude with a brief discussion of what we see to be some of the most salient social justice implications arising from feminist and participatory approaches to health research within neoliberal political spaces. (shrink)

From the perspective of many philosophers of mind in these early years of the 21st Century, the debate between dualism and physicalism has seemed to have stalled, if not to have come to a complete standstill. There seems to be no way to settle the basic clash of intuitions that underlies it. Recently however, a growing number of proponents of Russellian monism have suggested that their view promises to show us a new way forward. Insofar as Russellian monism might allow (...) us to break out of the current gridlock, it's no wonder that it's become "hot stuff." To my mind, however, the excitement about Russellian monism is misplaced. Though some version of Russellian monism might well be true, I do not believe that it enables us to break free of the dualism/physicalism divide. As I will argue, once we properly understand what's required to flesh out an adequate monistic story, we will see that we are in an important way right back where we started. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 379 Amy Bhatt The Butterfly Effect of Women’s Studies My entry into women’s studies began over two decades ago when I was an undergraduate at Emory University. I took Introduction to Women’s Studies in 1998, the same year that Feminist Studies published a formative issue on the evolution of women’s studies in the academy. I turned to doctoral (...) programs in women’s studies after graduation, all the while growing aware of the heated debates over the future (and the past) of the field, the challenges of crafting interdisciplinary graduate programs, the relationship between academic and activist feminisms, and the ramifications of institutionalization. By the time I entered the University of Washington’s PhD program in 2004, these conversations were further enlivened by the expansion of graduate degrees and certificates across the country and internationally. In 2017, I was promoted to associate professor after being hired as the first women’s studies tenure-track faculty member at my current institution, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Having been a part of three differently situated women’s studies programs/departments, I have experienced both the advantages that the field offers for engaged scholarship and teaching, but also the conceptual, resourcing, and workload problems that arise from doing interdisciplinary work. While not engaging the longer history of the scholarly and institutional evolution of women’s studies, my perspective as a relatively recently minted PhD student considers two areas: the promises and pitfalls of 380 Amy Bhatt graduate training (particularly in light of a constricted academic job market) and the impact of integrating women’s studies into the academy. Impossibilities and Promises In her introduction to a special forum on the paradoxes and challenges of women’s studies in graduate education in a 2003 issue of Feminist Studies (which took up the themes raised in the 1998 issue), Pamela Caughie points out that tension is at the core of women’s studies: “Interdisciplinary work depends on disciplinary knowledges; professional training may thwart social activism; theory cannot always be applied.”1 While women ’s studies programs have proliferated across higher education, even ardent feminist academics have levied forceful arguments against institutionalizing women’s studies as stand-alone units. In the same Feminist Studies article, Caughie argues that women’s studies should avoid “disciplining interdisciplinarity,” in part, because such attempts presume a (false) coherence in traditional disciplines that is oppositional to the interstitial nature of interdisciplinarity. While she advocates for graduate training in the field, she expresses concern that by hiring faculty in women’s studies and advocating for a shared research agenda, “we risk reproducing rather than critiquing disciplinary structures.”2 Likewise, in her introduction to Women’s Studies on the Edge, Joan Wallach Scott argues that, because of its formalization within the academy, women’s studies has lost its connection to activism and institutional critique.3 And perhaps most famously, Wendy Brown argues that the work of feminist, queer, critical race, and postcolonial theory ought to be returned to the disciplines, rather than remain within the separate, 1. Pamela L. Caughie, “Graduate Education in Women’s Studies: Paradoxes and Challenges (Introduction to Forum),” Feminist Studies 29, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 406. 2. Pamela L. Caughie, “Professional Identity Politics,” Feminist Studies 29, no. 2 (2003): 430. See also Robyn R. Warhol, “Nice Work, If You Can Get It— And If You Can’t? Building Women’s Studies Without Tenure Lines,” in Women’s Studies on Its Own, ed. Robyn Wiegman (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 224–32. 3. Joan Wallach Scott, “Introduction: Feminism’s Critical Edge,” in Women’s Studies on the Edge, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 1–16. Amy Bhatt 381 often marginalized, domain of women’s studies.4 Such critics caution against the formalization of and, in some cases, expansion of women’s studies across academe. On the other hand, advocates of women’s studies point out that the disciplines themselves are a taxonomy that reflects particular power/content /methodologicalinterventionsandthattheyarenotself-evidentspaces of knowledge production. They argue that formalization ought to be celebrated and that the debate over interdisciplinarity versus traditional disciplines has... (shrink)

One common response to the knowledge argument is the ability hypothesis. Proponents of the ability hypothesis accept that Mary learns what seeing red is like when she exits her black-and-white room, but they deny that the kind of knowledge she gains is propositional in nature. Rather, she acquires a cluster of abilities that she previously lacked, in particular, the abilities to recognize, remember, and imagine the color red. For proponents of the ability hypothesis, knowing what an experience is like simply (...) consists in the possession of these abilities. Criticisms of the ability hypothesis tend to focus on this last claim. Such critics tend to accept that Mary gains these abilities when she leaves the room, but they deny that such abilities constitute knowledge of what an experience is like. To my mind, however, this critical strategy grants too much. Focusing specifically on imaginative ability, I argue that Mary does not gain this ability when she leaves the room for she already had the ability to imagine red while she was inside it. Moreover, despite what some have thought, the ability hypothesis cannot be easily rescued by recasting it in terms of a more restrictive imaginative ability. My purpose here is not to take sides in the debate about physicalism, i.e., my criticism of the ability hypothesis is not offered in an attempt to defend the anti-physicalist conclusion of the knowledge argument. Rather, my purpose is to redeem the imagination from the misleading picture of it that discussion of the knowledge argument has fostered. (shrink)

Etiquette writer Judith Martin is frequently faced with “etiquette skeptics,” interlocutors who protest not simply that this or that rule of etiquette is problematic but complain that etiquette itself, qua a system of conventional norms for human conduct and communication, is objectionable. While etiquette skeptics come in a variety of forms, one of the most frequent skeptical complaints is that etiquette is artificial.The worries Martin canvasses are frequently also raised in more philosophical work as reasons to doubt the moral significance (...) of etiquette. See, e.g., Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners”, Ethics 109.4 : 795–826; Nancy Sherman, “The Look and Feel of Virtue”, in Christopher Gill, ed., Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics ; and Karen Stohr, On Manners , especially Chapter 1. “Artificial” typically operates in this context as a catch-all te .. (shrink)

La teoría feminista necesita tanto momentos de diagnóstico explicativo como de utopía anticipatoria con el fin de ser realmente crítica y verdaderamente feminista. Sin embargo, la tarea de diagnóstico explicativo en el análisis del funcionamiento de las relaciones de poder basadas en el género en toda su complejidad parece cortar la posibilidad misma de emancipación, de la cual depende la tarea de una utopía anticipatoria. En este artículo, considero esta inminente paradoja como una invitación a repensar nuestro entendimiento de la (...) emancipación y su relación con las dimensiones de utopía anticipatoria de la crítica; asimismo, cuestiono cuál es la concepción de emancipación compatible con un análisis de diagnóstico explicativo sobre la dominación de género, en la medida en que se encuentra ligada e involucrada con la raza, clase, sexualidad e imperio. Siguiendo a Michel Foucault, sostengo que una concepción negativista de la emancipación ofrece el mejor camino para que la teoría feminista transforme la paradoja de poder y emancipación en una tensión productiva que pueda alimentar a la crítica. (shrink)

Engage students as true partners in learning Instead of disruptions, avoidance, and withdrawal, your learners could be participating, investing, and driving their learning experience. It's time to reimagine student engagement! Focused around three essential goals, Reimagining Student Engagement develops a new vocabulary for real classrooms, proposes an engagement model positioning students as active partners in the learning process, and embeds the concept of engagement into the teaching and learning process. Inside you'll find: Reflection prompts that connect ideas to experiences Vignettes (...) illustrating common conceptions of engagement as well as challenges Case studies showcasing real teachers using engagement strategies with learners Practical classroom strategies and tips for application When you reimagine student engagement, you'll see your students as true agents of their own learning and provide them with the motivational resources that fuel collaboration and school success. (shrink)

Our ordinary conception of imagination takes it to be essentially a conscious phenomenon, and traditionally that’s how it had been treated in the philosophical literature. In fact, this claim had often been taken to be so obvious as not to need any argumentative support. But lately in the philosophical literature on imagination we see increasing support for the view that imagining need not occur consciously. In this paper, I examine the case for unconscious imagination. I’ll consider four different arguments that (...) we can find in the recent literature—three of which are based on cases and one that is based on considerations relating to action guidance. To my mind, none of these arguments is successful. I conclude that the case for postulating unconscious imagining has not yet been well motivated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 399-424 [Access article in PDF] Representation and the Body of Power in French Academic Painting Amy M. Schmitter [Figures] Reputation of power, is Power... Hobbes, Leviathan, Bk. I, ch. x Introduction It seems natural, even obvious, to distinguish between representations and what they are representations of. A picture of a dog is no more a dog than the word "dog" is (...) a furry, tail-wagging mammal. Nor are properties belonging to the object of a representation necessarily properties of the representation: a picture of a big dog need not be big, a picture of a dog that resembles Fido need not resemble Fido; even a picture of brown Fido need not be brown. And no number of pictures of Fido will sympathetically induce changes in Fido or any other dog. But however clear-cut this distinction may be when what is in question are pictorial references to ordinary, middle-sized material particulars such as dogs, it is much less clear in other cases. It is no violation of common-sense to consider "representations" of such things as gender norms or national identities or selves as non-neutral in the face of what they represent. The representations of gender norms, for example, can extend and enforce them, can change or undermine them, and may well lend a hand in constituting them in the first place.My theme here is a form of pictorial representation, one found in the theory and practice of that strain of French Academic painting under Louis XIV associated with Charles LeBrun. LeBrun held the titles of First Painter to the King and Director of the French Royal Academy of Painting, and the works I will examine were devoted to the royal power. That one effect of royal power is the ability to command resources and to cause the proliferation of representations, especially flattering representations, is no surprise. But I intend to suggest something stronger: not only did these Academic representations present an expenditure [End Page 399] of royal power, they were meant to embody and therefore extend royal power—even to constitute royal power. The view under examination does not simply collapse the common-sense distinction between signifying properties and what is signified; indeed those relations play an important role in one concept of representation modeled on language and written texts. But to this the academicians added another, more robust concept, one that does not distinguish clearly between the representation and its object.Implausible as this view may seem at first blush, I think it can prove genuinely explanatory: explanatory for thinking about pictorial representation, about how it can operate (on both its object and its viewer), and about its relation to power. But to see its explanatory value demands considering the nature and needs of state power. For unlike middle-sized material particulars, state power requires recognition to exist. Although that recognition need not be explicit, conscious, or voluntary, it must be widespread, and pictorial representations can be a powerful device for eliciting such recognition. Yet state power in general— or at least the particular form in question here—may demand that the constitutive role of recognition be disguised. Indeed many of the views and concepts of pictorial representation developed by the Academy reverse the dependence of power on recognition; they function in an ideology of representation. Nonetheless, I think that certain "formal," or structural, features of LeBrun's works can be explained in terms of how they elicit recognition and constitute this particular form of royal power. I make no claim that LeBrun's works must be explained so: for one, the royal power represented by LeBrun's works is long gone, and his representations do not now have any miraculous power to raise the dead. For any representations actually to operate as I suggest requires the support of a whole complex of institutions and activities committed to the care and feeding of state power. It is only because such a complex did exist that LeBrun's representations could have a recognizable object, i... (shrink)

Decades ago, in his foundational essay on the early days of the AIDS crisis, medical historian Charles Rosenberg wrote, “epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift toward closure.” In the course of epidemics, societies grappled with sudden and unexpected mortality and also returned to fundamental questions about core social values. “Epidemics,” Rosenberg wrote, (...) “have always provided occasion for retrospective moral judgment”. Following Rosenberg’s observations, this essay places COVID-19 in the context of epidemic history to examine common issues faced during health crises—moral, political, social, and individual. Each disease crisis unfolds in its own time and place. Yet, despite specific contexts, we can see patterns and recurring concerns in the history of pandemics: pandemics and disease crises in the past, along with public health responses to them, have had implications for civil liberties and government authority; disease crises have acted as a sort of stress test on society, revealing, amplifying or widening existing social fissures and health disparities; pandemics have forced people to cope with uncertain knowledge about the origin and nature of disease, the best sources of therapies, and what the future will hold after the crisis. While historians are not prognosticators, understanding past experience offers new perspectives for the present. The essay concludes by identifying aspects of history relevant to the road ahead. (shrink)

I investigate Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love and its relation to ethics. I argue that his phenomenology of love provides a possibility for developing ethics. I rely on the saturated phenomenon of the icon and his phenomenology of love. I establish that the icon provides a rich sense of relation, a need to modify certain appraisals of justice, and provides a descriptive account of the virtue of receptivity. In chapter one, I give an exegesis of Marion's phenomenology of the icon. (...) He argues that the icon moves toward charity, yet does not relate to ethics. Experience of the icon gives transformed vision that voids universal laws and frees the beholder to experience communion. In chapter two, I provide three examples of iconic experience that emphasize the importance of justice for the icon in contrast to Marion's formulation that justice is equivalent to revenge. I argue that Marion attacks justice because of its link to a deontological definition; yet, freed from deontology, Marion makes room for an apophatic way that moves toward a virtue ethic. In chapter three, I look at Marion's reasons for leaving ethics out of the icon. His critique of Kantian ethics, as well as his use and critique of the Levinas suggest that he opposes modern metaphysical ethics. In discussion of the receptivity to the call of the Other, he relies on the virtues. This reliance shows that Marion has room for a descriptive account of ethics, and that ignoring ethics undermines his overall project. I investigate Marion's claim that the icon opens up to charity by reading the apophatic doctrine of the icon in concert with the erotic reduction. I conclude that Marion’s phenomenology can be viewed as a counter-ethics a way to see phenomenology as a virtue practice, to unify reason and love in ethics, to remove the ego from the central concern of ethics, and to see the need for openness and vulnerability to the iconic other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 23-47 [Access article in PDF] Suárez' Doctrine of Eternal Truths Amy D. Karofsky 1. Introduction The primary aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Suárez' doctrine of eternal truths as found in Metaphysical Disputation XXXI, chapter XII, sections 38-47. There, following the typical scholastic style, Suárez considers and rejects several theories before developing his own. Because it is (...) somewhat difficult to determine what view Suárez ultimately adopts, interpretations of this passage tend to vary. For example, Norman Wells suggests that the necessity and eternality of essential propositions is grounded in the intellect of the divine being. 1 Armand Maurer and John P. Doyle maintain that eternal truths are not grounded in the being of God, but rather in the real being of the essences themselves. 2 I will argue that none of these interpretations adequately expresses Suárez' project, for Suárez wants a solution to the problem of eternal truths that does not depend upon the will of the divine being and one that avoids any ontological commitment to unactualized, possible essences. 3 2. Explanation of the Problem of Eternal Truths Suárez begins the thirty-first disputation with a proof of the identity of essence and existence in finite creatures. The key premise in his argument is the claim that, lacking existence, an unactualized essence is not a being, but absolutely [End Page 23] nothing. 4 By 'being' Suárez means existing being, or a being that is created by God. 5 Unlike the essence of God, the essence of a creature is dependent for its being on the efficient causality of God. Prior to the creative act of God, then, the essence of a creature is not an existing being, hence not a being at all; the unactualized, possible essence is a non-being or nothing.From the claim that a nonexistent essence is absolutely nothing, the following problem arises:... si, ablata existentia, perit essentia, ergo propositiones illae in quibus praedicata essentialia de re praedicantur, non sunt necessariae, neque perpetuae veritatis... 6An essential proposition of the form "X is f" is a proposition in which an essential property f is attributed to an object X. If there are no X's in existence, then there is nothing of which f can be predicated. It would seem, then, that the proposition, "X is f" must be false. One might maintain, however, that even though there are no X's in existence, there is an essence (of) X that has the property f. And in this way, "X is f" remains true, even if there are no X's in existence.However, if one holds, as Suárez does, that the unactualized essence is absolutely nothing, then this solution will not work. For if there are no X's in existence, and if a nonexistent essence is absolutely nothing, then there is nothing of which the essential attribute can be predicated. Thus it appears that any proposition that purports to attribute a property to a nonexistent object must be false and so clearly it can be neither necessarily nor eternally true. Therefore, because Suárez believes that an unactualized essence is absolutely nothing, he seems to be committed to the claim that essential propositions are neither necessarily, nor eternally, true. I will refer to this problem as the Problem of Eternal Truths.Another way to illustrate the Problem of Eternal Truths is to see that there are two seemingly inconsistent propositions: AN: An unactualized, possible essence is absolutely nothing, and NE: True essential propositions are necessarily and eternally true. [End Page 24]Given that a proposition in which a property is attributed to an unactualized essence is false, if Suárez wants to assert the truth of AN, it would appear that he must deny the truth of NE, and, in so doing, reject the possibility of any science of creatures that deals only with necessary truths.Suárez considers three different solutions to this problem: (What I will call) the Aristotelian Solution, the Divine... (shrink)

The common thought that Husserl was committed to a Platonist ontology of essences, and to a mysterious epistemology that holds that we can ‘intuit’ these essences, has contributed substantially to his work being dismissed and marginalized in analytic philosophy. This paper aims to show that it is misguided to dismiss Husserl on these grounds. First, the author aims to explicate Husserl’s views about essences and how we can know them, in ways that make clear that he is not committed to (...) a traditional Platonism, or a mystical epistemology. Second, the author argues that Husserl’s approach was an important source for Carnap in “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”, where Carnap tried to overcome the empiricists’ qualms about referring to abstracta. Finally, the author will argue that Husserl’s approach can be reconstructed in contemporary analytic terms by appeal to the idea of pleonastic transformations. By seeing both Husserl’s views and their influences on later analytic work more clearly, the hope is to build bridges and make clear that the approach is of lasting value and interest. (shrink)

In The Matter of Consciousness, in the course of his extended discussion and defense of Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Torin Alter dismisses some objections on the grounds that they are cases of cheating. Though some opponents of the knowledge argument offer various scenarios in which Mary might come to know what seeing red is like while still in the room, Alter argues that the proposed scenarios are irrelevant. In his view, the Mary case is offered to defend the claim (...) that phenomenal facts cannot be a priori deduced from physical facts. Thus, a proposed scenario constitutes an objection to the knowledge argument only if it presents a case in which Mary’s learning inside the room comes about via a priori deduction from physical facts. Call this the deducibility standard. In what follows, I’ll explore a series of relevant cases in an effort to clarify this standard. Doing so enables us to better understand how cheating should be assessed in this context and thereby also to get clearer on the argumentative dialectic surrounding the Mary case. (shrink)

In Ontology Made Easy (2015), I defend the idea that there are ‘easy’ inferences that begin from uncontroversial premises and end with answers to disputed ontological questions. But what do easy inferences really get us? Bueno and Cumpa (this journal, 2020) argue that easy inferences don’t tell us about the natures of properties—they don’t tell us what properties are. Moreover, they argue, by accepting an ontologically neutral quantifier we can also resist the conclusion that properties or numbers exist. Here I (...) address these two issues in turn—in ways that help clarify both the scope and results of easy ontology.First, it is important to see that easy inferences were never intended to address modal questions. Modal questions are addressed by a different part of the total deflationary view—modal normativism. So understood, metaphysical modal questions nonetheless do not provide a remaining area for serious metaphysical inquiry. Second, I argue that we have reason to resist adopting an ontologically neutral quantifier, if we aim to answer ontological questions (without begging the question). Addressing these issues helps to clarify both what does (and does not) follow from easy inferences, and how they form part of a larger deflationary metametaphysical view. (shrink)

Summary Theatre offers an opportunity for communities to think with and through fiction. We come together to hear and tell stories because it is moving, both in the literal and the figurative sense: it changes us. Theories from cognitive science of embodied cognition make clear that making sense of theatre is a full-bodied affair. In this essay, I argue that we can see moments when theatre invited its audience to think in new ways by shifting theatrical conventions. I explore how (...) a contemporary production of Hamlet, Pan Pan’s production of “The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane”, brings its audience to question the stability of the self and text by altering the conventions around casting and representation. This is theatre that I may not understand in a traditional way, but this gives me a way to understand a new way of thinking about the world around me. It is theatre I can use. (shrink)

Those working in experimental philosophy have raised a number of arguments against the use of conceptual analysis in philosophical inquiries. But they have typically focused on a model that pursues conceptual analysis by taking intuitions as a kind of (defeasible) evidence for philosophical hypotheses. Little attention has been given to the constitutivist alternative, which sees metaphysical modal facts as reflections of constitutive semantic rules. I begin with a brief overview of the constitutivist approach and argue that we can defend a (...) role for conceptual analysis, so understood, in ontological disputes against both the general skepticism about the relevance of intuitions, and against the specific worries raised by experimental results. Finally, I argue that even if the constitutivist view is adopted, experimental philosophy may still have quite a useful role to play, though purely empirical inquiries cannot in principle do the ontological work alone. (shrink)

The year 1997 was critical for Thailand. A severe economic crisis hit in July calling into question years of economic growth and increasing prosperity. A few months later Thailand adopted a new Constitution that aimed at reforming the political system, and at making corruption and vote buying less prevalent. While this article shows that the economic turmoil was a prime catalyst for political change, it was not as simple as saying that public outcry over the economic crisis forced conservative parliamentarians (...) into voting to accept the proposed constitution. While public outcry did matter, what is vitally important is that elite political leaders, the heads of the major parties, ministers, and generals, were renegotiating their alliances and ties both with one another, and with various groups in society that were pushing for change. Elite resignation to political pressure and policy shifts among the top leaders is what ultimately allows for the passage of the constitution and for Prime Minister Chavalit's departure. This article takes a closer look at Thai politics and tries to answer the following questions: Did the economic crisis lead to (meaningful) political reform and why or why not? Since the codification of the 1997 constitution has Thai politics become more democratic? It is my analysis that the consolidation of democracy was in reach in 1997 but today has slipped further from Thai citizens' grasp. The explanations, or the independent variables for both the successful reforms of the political system in 1997 and the backsliding away from democratization, are largely the same. When both internal and external pressures prod democracy along, reforms take place. When pressures are pushing in different directions democratic reforms become threatened. Internal pressures include the military, civil society, and the behavior and power of political and economic elites; and external ones are the IMF, national security concerns, and globalization in general. When conditions or variables change, and when elite priorities or preferences shift, as this article will show, we can see the results in Thai politics. (shrink)

It is natural to wish to study miniaturisations of Cohen forcing suitable to sets of low arithmetic complexity. We consider extensions of the work of Schaeffer [9] and Jockusch and Posner [6] by looking at genericity notions within the Δ2 sets. Different equivalent characterisations of 1-genericity suggest different ways in which the definition might be generalised. There are two natural ways of casting the notion of 1-genericity: in terms of sets of strings and in terms of density functions, as we (...) will see here. While these definitions coincide at the first level of the difference hierarchy, they turn out to differ at other levels. Furthermore, these differences remain when the remainder of the Δ02 sets are considered. While the string characterization of 1-genericity collapses at the second level of the difference hierarchy to 2-genericity, the density function definition gives a very interesting hierarchy at level w and above. Both of these results point towards the deep similarities exhibited by the n-c.e. degrees for n ≥ 2. (shrink)

Modern philosophy presents us with amalgams which testify to its vigour and vitality, but which also have their dangers for thespirit. A strange mixture of ontology and anthropology, of atheism and theology. A little Christian spiritualism, a little Hegeliandialectic, a little phenomenology (our modern scholasticism) and a little Nietzschean fulguration oddly combined in varying proportions.We see Marx and the Pre-Socratics, Hegel and Nietzsche, dancing hand in hand in a round in celebration of the surpassing of metaphysics and even the death (...) of philosophy properly speaking. (Deleuze, NP, 195). (shrink)

Feminist epistemology and feminist art theory are characterized by an opposition to modernity's separation of art, politics, and knowledge into three autonomous spheres. However, this opposition is not enough to distinguish them from other philosophies. In this paper I examine parallels between the two fields of inquiry in order to discover what makes them distinctively feminist. Feminist epistemology sees interconnections between knowledge and politics, feminist art theory sees connections between art and politics. We need to explore as well connections between (...) art and knowledge. Compared to feminist epistemology, feminist art theory has had much less exposure, and in this paper I emphasize what the former can learn from the latter. In particular, I suggest that feminist art can answer a call made by feminist theories of knowledge for a kind of transformative knowledge. If we focus on the features of activist art explored by feminist art theories, we see that feminist art is particularly suited to engage emotions as well as the intellect. It is an example of nonpropositional knowledge, and is interactive rather than striving to pass down lessons from above. Feminist art celebrates the power of art to “make strange” and to unsettle fixed identities which can transform our understanding of the world. There is a tendency in some feminist art theory to separate the more concrete work (rediscovering women artists, recognizing women's crafts as art forms, and investigating sexist imagery in art), from the theoretical project of reenvisioning the relations of art to its sociopolitical context. I conclude by arguing that without an awareness of the dialectical relationship between the concrete and the theoretical, feminist art theories run the risk of losing their feminist specificity. They would then amount to little more than abstract pronouncements of the interconnections between art, politics, and knowledge. We need to maintain the feminist specificity of feminist politics in our theories of art and knowledge, and I use examples throughout the essay, drawn particularly from feminist activist art, with this goal in mind. (shrink)

La personalidad es un aspecto de la experiencia humana que es complejo y está lleno de matices. En este artículo, Nyary explora el tema de la personalidad en relación con la novela _Piranesi_ de Susanna Clarke, cuyo personaje principal, el londinense Piranesi, está atrapado en la Casa, un laberinto con cientos de habitaciones, sin ningún recuerdo de su vida pasada. Tras una estancia prolongada en este lugar, Piranesi se transforma en una persona diferente. Lo anterior refleja que, como consecuencia de (...) la naturaleza humana, las personas tienden a crear una imagen pública para parecer más agradables, mientras ocultan sus verdaderas personalidades. Nyary afirma que la Casa representa nuestra verdadera personalidad y Londres, la versión que mostramos al mundo. Al ampliar el alcance de esta metáfora, Nyary hace énfasis en la importancia de comprender y nutrir nuestra verdadera personalidad y las implicaciones que esto tiene para la sociedad. (shrink)

In Chapter One, I define two problems inherent in Spinoza's theory of sense perception. I call them "the Proposition Twelve problem" and "the sameness of perceptual experience problem," and I describe them as follows. The Proposition Twelve problem. According to Proposition Twelve of Book Two of the Ethics, human minds perceive all events in the bodies with which they are identified. Furthermore, according to Propositions Sixteen, Seventeen, and Nineteen, human minds also perceive the causes of such events. Introspection belies these (...) claims. The sameness of perceptual experience problem. By the Scholium to Proposition Thirteen of Book Two of the Ethics, all beings have minds which perceive events in their bodies, and by Propositions Sixteen, Seventeen, and Nineteen, all beings also perceive the causes of their bodily events. If all beings perceive events in their bodies and the causes of these events, then all have the same kind of perceptual experience. But philosophical intuition denies that this is so. ;After characterizing the two difficulties, I discuss various scholarly replies to them, placing my work within the context of the critical tradition. In Chapter Two, I offer resolutions of the problems I see as available to Spinoza: that the duration of the perception of a bodily modification varies with the complexity of the modification, and that the duration, associability, frequency, and coherence of perceptions of causes of bodily modifications vary in the same way; that the associability, frequency, coherence, and distinctness of perceptions of causes of bodily modifications vary with the number of modifications a host body sustains, where the number of modifications sustained is a function of the complexity of the host body; that, given the correlations based on duration, perceptions of complex modifications and their causes are more present to the human mind than perceptions of simple modifications and their causes; that, given the correlations based on duration and number, perceptions by minds of complex organisms are longer, more associable, more frequent, and more coherent than perceptions by minds of simple organisms. In Chapter Three, I comment on issues in interpretation related to the resolutions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin J. B. LipscombAmy Gilbert RichardsLIPSCOMB, Benjamin J. B. The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. xxx + 326 pp. Cloth, $27.95In The Women Are Up to Something, Lipscomb demonstrates in form (...) and content the inextricable link between philosophical theory and personal story and character. The book tells two stories: "first, a story [End Page 148] about four women, their overlapping friendships, and their struggle to establish themselves as philosophers in an often-hostile context; second, a story about two conflicting approaches to ethics." These two stories connect through the role these women played in the development of the second of the conflicting approaches—a challenge to the mid-twentieth-century Oxbridge orthodoxy in metaethics, what Lipscomb later calls a "minority report."Chapter 1 centers on the fact–value divide. The consequence of this divide for ethics lies in its banishment of all evaluative terms from the realm of possible facts, thereby demoting them to matters of "opinion." Lipscomb here offers a genealogy of the divide. He also introduces the insight that will become the seed of the minority report: The picture of the world offered by the fact-value divide is just that, a picture. Bringing to light the deep background pictures that undergird our understanding of the world is one of the most difficult intellectual tasks. But the picture rooted in the fact–value divide includes the claim that the divide itself is simply a "fact"—not a picture at all, and therefore not contestable. Lipscomb labels this view "the Dawkins' sublime."The next three chapters continue the work of stage-setting. Chapter 2 immerses us in the Oxford of the women's undergraduate years—an Oxford temporarily but dramatically altered by World War II, where female students made up a much larger percentage of the undergraduate population than was usual, and where professors were in a new way open to mentoring women. Chapter 3 briefly recounts all four childhoods, lived in the aftermath of the first World War. Chapter 4 returns to Oxford and narrates the graduate degrees of the four women. It also offers a perceptive primer on the history of analytic ethics, culminating in the state of the field at the point when the women were on the cusp of entering it—the precise shape of the approach to ethics the women would eventually abjure.Each of the next four chapters traces the development of the mature philosophy of one of the four women—in order: Murdoch, Anscombe, Foot, and Midgley. Despite deep differences among their philosophical and theological outlooks, they all four came to defend a version of the thesis, commonplace in ancient and medieval philosophy, that there are things that are good for human beings qua human being, that our moral lives are largely a matter of seeing and responding—well or poorly—to these elements of the human good that are given as part of our nature. In other words, there are facts about values. We in crucial ways discover rather than invent morality.The last chapter serves as an epilogue to both stories: It traces the ways in which the writing and lives of these four women produced a decisive change in the landscape of Anglo-American philosophy. Lipscomb notes which strains in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy owe their existence to the minority report. Figures like Korsgaard feature as contemporary representatives of an ethics grounded in the fact–value [End Page 149] divide. Figures like MacIntyre and Hursthouse feature as inheritors of the philosophical legacy of the book's heroines.In this final chapter Lipscomb also offers brief portraits of the later life and death of each of the women in turn. At the end of the final portrait, the book rounds to a poetic close—not offering a final philosophical statement but reflecting on the fruits of friendship and the power of its legacy for those who come after.It is difficult to pin down Lipscomb's precise philosophical... (shrink)

[ES] Los trabajos recientes de Stephen Schiffer en el desarrollo de una explicación pleonástica de proposiciones producen resultados importantes que cambian el significado tanto de la ontología de primer orden como de la meta-ontología. El objetivo del presente trabajo es dejar en claro cuáles son estas consecuencias y por qué son tan importantes. Según mi punto de vista, la mayor amenaza para los partidarios de la metafísica proviene de un punto de vista que yo he llamado en otro trabajo el (...) acercamiento «fácil» a la ontología: los argumentos de Schiffer a favor de proposiciones «pleonásticas», propiedades, estados, eventos y personajes ficticios; los argumentos neo-fregeanos a favor de la existencia de números; y mis propios argumentos a favor de objetos sociales, culturales, y personajes ficticios, y objetos ordinarios como mesas y sillas. El trabajo expande estas tres diferentes formas de ontología fácil, mostrando sus interrelaciones y argumenta que estos acercamientos nos dan un realismo ciento por ciento directo, sobre las entidades en cuestión. A un nivel meta-ontológico, sin embargo, el trabajo sugiere que el debate ontológico serio es confundido porque sus preguntas ontológicas tienen respuestas tan directas. Este acercamiento podría ser la amenaza más importante para la metafísica seria, pero también es extremadamente prometedor como una manera de disolver misterios y clarificar la epistemología de la metafísica. [EN] Stephen Schiffer’s recent work in developing a pleonastic account of propositions leads to major, game-changing results in both first-order ontology and meta-ontology. This paper aims to clarify what these consequences are and why they are so important. In my view, the biggest threat to the metaphysical party comes from a view I have elsewhere called the «easy» approach to ontology: Schiffer’s arguments for «pleonastic» propositions, properties, fictional characters, states and events; the neo-Fregean’s arguments for the existence of numbers; and my own arguments for fictional characters, social and cultural objects, and ordinary objects such as tables and chairs. The paper draws out these three different forms of easy ontology, showing their interrelations, and argues that these approaches really give us a straightforward, out and out realism about the entities in question. On the meta-ontological level however, it suggests that serious ontological debate in metaphysics is confused because its ontological questions have so straightforward answers. This approach may be the most important threat to serious metaphysics but it is also extremely promising as a way of dissolving mysteries and clarifying the epistemology of metaphysics. (shrink)

Distress and guilt are common aspects of grief. For many, especially those experiencing complicated grief, guilt can often feel overwhelming and be prolonged. Those grieving are often subject to thoughts of the form “If only X” or “I should have done Y.” Fueling these thoughts is the belief that, somehow, a loved one has been harmed by death. Some who are grieving, often experience the thought that they are disappointing those who have passed or, even, harming the memory of those (...) they love. These feelings have little logical support if, as Epicurus suggests, the dead can’t be harmed, and death is not a misfortune to the dead. In this article I will outline the Epicurean view on death with the expectation that it may be useful in philosophical counseling for those experiencing anguish as a part of the process. (shrink)

In his Gospel, John reveals this key leadership principle: effective leaders harness the power of narrative to illuminate the metanarrative and connect people to it. John uses narrative techniques to make invisible spiritual realities visible and thus succeeds in connecting people to the metanarrative. John forges a link between people and the metanarrative by showing individuals how their own stories fit into the biblical metanarrative, fulfilling his purpose: ‘These are written that you may believe…’. The church is transmitted through the (...) ages by leaders who write. Because the metanarrative is a story and story is accessible to all audiences, the biblical metanarrative is not dependent on culture, time, or context; it transcends the ages, enabling John to lead and write from the present as well as for the future. Thus, John illuminates the metanarrative not only for the infant church but for all Christians to come. Christian leaders today also need to communicate so their people can see their place in the metanarrative of Scripture. (shrink)

Laughing at the Devil is an invitation to see the world with a medieval visionary now known as Julian of Norwich, believed to be the first woman to have written a book in English. (We do not know her given name, because she became known by the name of a church that became her home.) Julian “saw our Lord scorn [the Devil's] wickedness” and noted that “he wants us to do the same.” In this impassioned, analytic, and irreverent book, Amy (...) Laura Hall emphasizes Julian's call to scorn the Devil. Julian of Norwich envisioned courage during a time of fear. Laughing at the Devil describes how a courageous woman transformed a setting of dread into hope, solidarity, and resistance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche's Free SpiritAmy MullinOn the back cover of the original 1882 edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche tells us that this book represents "the conclusion of a series of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche whose common goal is to erect a new image and ideal of the free spirit."1 He furthermore tells us that to this series belong: Human, all too Human (1878), The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), Daybreak (...) (1881), and The Gay Science (1882, Books 1-4).2 Nietzsche's interest in the topics of fate and freedom dates back to some of his earliest writings, those written in the spring of 1862 and recently translated by George Stack as "Fate and History" and "Freedom of Will and Fate."3 Furthermore, Nietzsche's writings after 1882 remain dedicated, unto the last, to the importance of this new ideal of the free spirit. Thus, for instance, Part Two of Beyond Good and Evil (1886) is entitled "The Free Spirit," and in the autumn of 1888, in plans for his never written Revaluation of All Values, Book 2 was to be entitled "The Free Spirit. Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement."4Yet little attention has been paid to interpreting Nietzsche's corpus, particularly [End Page 383] the works from his middle period, as characterized by a common goal, that of erecting a new image and ideal of the free spirit.5 Furthermore, too often little distinction is made between what Nietzsche admired in the past, nobility or the master, what he admires in the present, the free spirit, and what he hopes to come in the future, philosophers of the future and the Übermensch. The philosophers of the future will be very free spirits, but they will not be merely free spirits. Nietzsche tells us that he and his fellow free spirits are merely the "heralds and precursors" of the philosophers of the future.6 This suggests that we cannot simply equate, as Alexander Nehamas does, the free spirit and the "philosopher of the future,"7 and we should not speak interchangeably of masters or nobles, free spirits, philosophers of the future, and Übermenschen.8In a related error, free spirits are said to possess all the traits Nietzsche praises. Ruth Abbey, for instance, characterizes the values constitutive of free spirithood as "autonomy in thought and action, intellectual strength and daring, desire and ability to pursue the truth, capacity for cruelty and the skills of dialogue."9 While it is true that Nietzsche does suggest that the dialogue is the perfect conversation,10 he nowhere associates skills in dialogue with a free spirit. Instead, the free spirit is strongly associated with isolation, which would tend to preclude conversation, skilful or otherwise.We need to give an account of the free spirit which distinguishes it from Nietzsche's other ideals, while also connecting the new ideal of a free spirit to other aspects of Nietzsche's thought, most particularly his condemnation of [End Page 384] universalistic moralities, and his account of the possibility of controlling one's interpretations of the world in order to carry on experiments in knowledge. It is only once we have become clear about what a free spirit is like that we can evaluate Nietzsche's claim to have constructed a new ideal, and begin to consider whether this ideal has any appeal for us today, and why.In order to understand what a free spirit is and is not, we need (1) to distinguish between so-called free spirits and Nietzsche's new ideal of a free spirit, and (2) to appreciate the radical distinction between freedom of spirit and freedom of will.11 We will then be in a position (3) to see that, far from being opposed to necessity, free spirits are a product of it. We will then need (4) to look at the details of Nietzsche's account of the free spirit. Do free spirits share characteristic traits? Since free spirits all begin as fettered spirits, we will need to see what trajectory Nietzsche sees free spirits taking from fetters to freedom. Here it will be important to recognize that Nietzsche speaks of several stages of free... (shrink)

Activist and political art works, particularly feminist ones, are frequently either dis-missed for their illegitimate combination of the aesthetic and the political, or embraced as chiefly political works. Flawed conceptions of politics and the imagination are responsible for that dismissal. An understanding of the imagination is developed that allows us to see how political work and political explorations may inform the artistic imagination.

Inequitable access to health care, social inequities, and racist and discriminatory care has resulted in the trend toward poorer health outcomes for Indigenous infants and their families when compared to non‐Indigenous families in Canada. How Indigenous mothers experience care during an admission of their infant to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit has implications for future health‐seeking behaviors which may influence infant health outcomes. Nurses are well positioned to promote positive health care interactions and improve health outcomes by effectively meeting the (...) needs of Indigenous families. This qualitative study was guided by interpretive description and the Two‐Eyed Seeing framework and aimed to understand how Indigenous mothers experience accessing and using the health care system for their infants. Data were collected by way of interviews and a discussion group with self‐identifying Indigenous mothers of infants less than two years of age living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Data underwent thematic analysis, identifying nursing strategies to support positive health care interactions and promote the health and wellness of Indigenous infants and their families. Building relationships, providing holistic care, and taking a trauma‐informed approach to the involvement of child protection services are three key strategies that nurses can use to positively impact health care experiences for Indigenous families. (shrink)

“Ontology” is understood and undertaken very differently in the phenomenological tradition than it is in the recent analytic tradition. Here I argue that those differences are not accidental, but instead reflect deeper differences in views about what the proper role and methods for philosophy are. I aim to show that, from a phenomenological perspective, questions about what exists can be answered ‘easily,’ whether through trivial inferences (in the case of ideal abstracta) or (always tentatively, of course) by ordinary empirical means—seeing (...) how our observations hang together. As a result, it can get us away from the obscurities, epistemological mysteries, and skepticism that the neo-Quinean approach to ontology has left us in and provide a clearer and less problematic approach to questions of ontology. (shrink)