Unifying Geography focuses on the plural and competing versions of unity that characterize the discipline, which give it cohesion and differentiate it from related fields of knowledge. Each of the chapters is co-authored by both a leading physical and a human geographer. Themes identified include those of the traditional core as well as new and developing topics that are based on subject matter, concepts, methodology, theory, techniques and applications.
This paper moves beyond corporate environmental disclosure (CED), and examines the concept of corporate sustainability disclosure (CSD) and CSD standards. While sustainability disclosure has been adopted by some larger firms, the majority of transnational firms do not yet participate in this process. This paper develops a framework and propositions for effective CSD standards. Consistent with general literature on standards, this study suggests that CSD standards that are broadly-focused and developed by private standard setters (e.g., GRI) hold the greatest promise for (...) widespread acceptance. Furthermore, the paper suggests that financial analysts--who provide the metrics for firm valuation—should participate in developing a universal set of CSD standards, in order to promote acceptance. (shrink)
Breaking with a Puritan past -- A mother's concern -- Turmoil and diversity in the English Reformation -- The influences and the options available in English -- Reformation theology -- Intellectual trends : patristics and hebrew -- Millennialism and the belief in a providential age -- Bacon's break with the godly -- Bacon's turn toward the ancient faith -- The formative years -- Bacon and Andrewes -- The Meditationes sacrae and Bacon's turn away from calvinism -- Bacon's confession of faith (...) -- In the beginning : the creation of nature and the nature of the fall the instauration as an event in sacred history -- The ages of the world and the chain of causes -- Creation as a pattern for human learning -- Humanity in the garden -- Knowledge and the fall -- Knowledge as a support for the faith -- Human effort as the key to recovery -- On the way of salvation : Bacon's twofold via salutis -- Bbacon and original sin -- Patterns in divine action and prophecies of instauration -- The instauration in the history of providence -- Bacon's providential age -- The conditions for instauration -- In the autumn of the world : features of the age of instauration -- Irenaeus and Francis Bacon on the golden age -- Inaugurated eschatology in Bacon's instauration -- Laborers in the fields of instauration : orders and offices -- Rebuilding the temple of nature -- Human agency and the instauration -- The problem of confusing the two books -- The possibility of immortality -- Bacon's circle and his legacy -- Bacon's literary circle -- Tobie Matthew (1577-1655) -- William Rawley (1588-1667) -- Henry Wotton (15681639) -- Thomas Bushell (1594-1674) -- John Selden (1584-1654) -- George Herbert (1593-1633) -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- Thomas Bodley (1545-1613) -- Conclusions regarding Bacon's literary circle -- The reform of learning in the Civil War and the commonwealth the restoration and the Royal Society -- The Enlightenment transformation of Bacon's memory. (shrink)
School science education is currently the subject of much debate. Historians and philosophers of science should play a role in this debate. Since the late nineteenth century there has been a persistent, if minor, tradition arguing for the incorporation of historical and philosophical dimensions in the teaching of school science. With the current crisis in science teaching, there are encouraging signs that more attention is being paid to this tradition. What is required is much greater collaboration between philosophers, historians, and (...) science educators, particularly in the training of teachers. (shrink)
The “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches have been thought to exhaust the possibilities for doing cognitive neuroscience. We argue that neither approach is likely to succeed in providing a theory that enables us to understand how cognition is achieved in biological creatures like ourselves. We consider a promising third way of doing cognitive neuroscience, what might be called the “neural dynamic systems” approach, that construes cognitive neuroscience as an autonomous explanatory endeavor, aiming to characterize in its own terms the states and (...) processes responsible for brain-based cognition. We sketch the basic motivation for the approach, describe a particular version of the approach, so-called ‘Dynamic Causal Modeling’ (DCM), and consider a concrete example of DCM. This third way, we argue, has the potential to avoid the problems that afflict the other two approaches. (shrink)
This study investigates the relative attractiveness of production level jobs provided by multinational firms in Mexico's maquiladora industry. We take the position that workers themselves are an important and often overlooked source of information relevant to the controversy focusing on the responsibilities of multinational companies to their employees in the developing world. We conducted interviews with 59 maquila production level workers in the Mexican cities of Cd. Juárez and Chihuahua. Using a relative attractiveness framework that compared maquila jobs to other (...) employment available in the local economy, maquila line and technical workers responded to questions addressing why they were working at a maquila, their work history, the attractiveness of maquila jobs compared to both their prior jobs and the jobs held by friends and family, and whether they planned to continue working in the maquilas. While the responses from maquila workers are diverse, they suggest that maquila jobs provide attractive employment for the economically disadvantaged in Northern Mexico. (shrink)
Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews examines the intriguing shifts in Plato's attitude to perplexity and suggests that these may represent a course of philosophical development that philosophers follow even today.
Many believe that the grammatical sentences of a natural language are a recursive set. In this paper I argue that the commonly adduced grounds for this belief are inconclusive, if not simply unsound. Neither the native speaker's ability to classify sentences nor his ability to comprehend them requires it. Nor is there at present any reason to think that decidability has any bearing on first-language acquisition. I conclude that there are at present no compelling theoretical grounds for requiring that transformational (...) grammars enumerate only recursive sets. Hence, the fact that proposed transformational grammars do not satisfy this requirement does not, as some have claimed, represent a shortcoming in current theory. (shrink)
This paper aims to provide an argument for saying that a publicly funded health care system, available to all free at the point of delivery, is morally superior to a market system, and to provide a framework for deciding questions about which forms of health care should be included in such a public system. The argument presents health care as a âheadâ, in the sense of something to which human beings are morally entitled as a necessary condition for a life (...) worthy of human dignity. Alternative arguments for similar conclusions, proposed by Daniels and Buchanan, are critically examined and rejected. (shrink)
One challenge to the concept of human dignity is that it is a rootless notion invoked simply to mask inequalities that inevitably exist between human beings. This privileging of humans is speciesist and its weak point is the profoundly disabled human being. This article argues that far from being a weak point, the profoundly disabled person is a source of strength and witness to the intrinsic dignity that all human beings have by virtue of being human. The disabled represent the (...) reality of human existence that is both strong and fragile. Although human dignity can be understood philosophically its depth is rooted in Christian theological insights. The profoundly disabled occupy a privileged position and share in a theology of mission since they testify to the interdependence of every human being and human dependence on God to a myopic world that only values strength, autonomy and independence . Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 185-203 DOI 10.1558/hrge.v17i2.185 Authors Pia Matthews, Theology, Philosophy, and History, St Mary’s University College, Waldegrave Road, Strawberry Hill, TW1 4SX Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 2 / 2011. (shrink)
The speculative power of theoretical reason is not only incapable of grounding itself, but is also powerless to integrate and unify all of the different aspects of our intellectual and spiritual life. This impotency of what Schelling called negative philosophy gives rise to the demand for a positive philosophy that supplies the integrative grounding in which das Unvordenkliche—that before which nothing can be thought—is rooted. I contrast what Schelling calls an “inverted concept” with Huineng’s account of wu-nien (no-thought) found in (...) the Platform Sutra (Tun-Huang Manuscript). Both Schelling and Huineng advance their respective ideas as not only the necessary basis of their thinking, but as a necessary experience one must undergo in order to realize and thus truly comprehend their teaching. Huineng connects this lived knowing with sudden enlightenment, while Schelling speaks of the exuberant fullness of ecstasy. I close with a brief account of Schelling’s appeal for pluralistic tolerance among different philosophical and religious traditions, in which he argues that such traditions are in error to the degree they lay claim to exclusive and infallible truth. (shrink)
The natural based view of the firm using Hart (1995) is applied to firm responses in the Carbon Disclose Project (CDP) database. A large cross sectional sample(n=573) of North American and European firms is divided into 3 categories of proactivity to the climate change issue using 8 indicators of four resource domains. Results are presented along geographic and size dimensions.
It is clear from these and other definitions that development, no matter how it is conceived, involves change. However, it is also clear that not all change constitutes development. A particular change could be part of a process of development, but could also be part of several other processes, such as those of alteration, modification, deformation, adaptation, regression, degradation and the like. Thus it is necessary to differentiate between changes that can be said to be part of a process of (...) development, and those that cannot. In an attempt to make such a distinction and in line with the above-mentioned definitions of development one could say that changes that are part of development are changes that bring about increased likeness to some more advanced or better state of being. (shrink)
It has become quite common for people to develop `personal'' relationships nowadays, exclusively via extensive correspondence across the Net. Friendships, even romantic love relationships, are apparently, flourishing. But what kind of relations really are possible in this way? In this paper, we focus on the case of close friendship. There are various important markers that identify a relationship as one of close friendship. One will have, for instance, strong affection for the other, a disposition to act for their well-being and (...) a desire for shared experiences. Now obviously, while all these features of friendship can gain some expression through extensive correspondence on the Net, such expression is necessarily limited –you cannot, e.g., physically embrace the other, or go on a picnic together. The issue we want to address here however, is whether there might be distinctive and important influences on the structure of interaction undertaken on the Net, that affect the kind of identity ``Net-friends'''' can develop in relation to one another. In the normal case, one develops a close friendship, and in doing so, one''s identity, in part, is shaped by the friendship. To some extent, through extensive shared experience, one comes to see aspects of the world (and of oneself) through the eyes of one''s friend and so, in part, one''s identity develops in an importantly relational way, i.e., as the product of one''s relation with the close friend. In our view, however, on account of the limits of, and/or the kind of, shared contact and experience one can have with another via correspondence on the Net, there are significant structural barriers to developing the sort of relational identity that is a feature of close friendship. In arguing our case here, and by using the case of Net ``friendship'''' as our foil, we aim to shed light on the nature and importance of certain sorts of self-expression and relational interaction found in close friendship. (shrink)
The ontological argument in Anselm’s Proslogion II continues to generate a remarkable store of sophisticated commentary and criticism. However, in our opinion, much of this literature ignores or misrepresents the elegant simplicity of the original argument. The dialogue below seeks to restore that simplicity, with one important modification. Like the original, it retains the form of a reductio, which we think is essential to the argument’s great genius. However, it seeks to skirt the difficult question of whether 'exists' is a (...) genuine predicate by appealing instead to a distinction between having only mediated causal powers and having unmediated causal powers. Pegasus has no unmediated causal powers, but he has mediated causal powers through the thoughts, depictions, and literature in which he figures. This distinction allows us to argue about the existence of God without begging any questions. (shrink)
Readers who are introduced to philosophical analysis by reading the early Platonic dialogues may be puzzled to find that Plato, in his middle and late periods, largely abandons the style of analysis characteristic of early Plato, namely, the 'Socratic elenchus'. This paper undertakes to solve the puzzle. In contrast to what is popularly called 'the Socratic method', the elenchus requires that Socrates, the lead investigator, not have a satisfactory answer to his 'What is F-ness?' question. Here is the bind. Part (...) of what motivates the elenctic inquiry is the natural assumption that one cannot identify F-things unless one has a satisfactory analysis of what it is to be F. But to test the adequacy of suggested analyses of F-ness one needs to be able to identify counterexamples. Together these two points present us with a 'catch-22', which is something the 'paradox of inquiry' in the Meno brings out. In the Theaetetus Plato makes clear that, although the elenchus, including Socratic ignorance, can refute philosophical theses arrived at by other means, it cannot, by itself, give birth to viable philosophical theses. Its legitimate role is therefore only propaedeutic. (shrink)
Marya Schechtman argues that psychological continuity accounts of personal identity, as represented by Derek Parfit's account, fail to escape the circularity objection. She claims that Parfit's deployment of quasi-memory (and other quasi-psychological) states to escape circularity implicitly commit us to an implausible view of human psychology. Schechtman suggests that what is lacking here is a coherence condition, and that this is something essential in any account of personal identity. In response to this I argue first that circularity may be escaped (...) using quasi-psychological states even with the addition of the coherence condition. Second, I argue that there is something right about the coherence condition, and a major task of this paper is to identify its proper theoretical role. I do so by reflection on integration therapies for people with multiple personality disorder (MPD). The familiar distinction between the moral and the metaphysical concept of the person is developed alongside such reflection. Connecting these two issues I argue that coherence acts as a normative constraint on accounts of personal identity, but that the normative dimension of personhood is not essential to our notion of a person tout court. (shrink)
The condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is metaphysically strange. Can there really be several distinct persons operating in a single body? Our view is that DID sufferers are single persons with a severe mental disorder. In this paper we compare the phenomenology of dissociation between personality states in DID with certain delusional disorders. We argue both that the burden of proof must lie with those who defend the metaphysically extravagant Multiple Persons view and (...) that there is little theoretical motivation to yield to that view in light of the fact that the core symptoms of DID bear remarkable similarity to the symptoms of these other disorders where no such extravagance is ever seriously entertained. (shrink)
Among theories of personal identity over time the simple view has not been popular among philosophers, but it nevertheless remains the default view among non philosophers. It may be construed either as the view that nothing grounds a claim of personal identity over time, or that something quite simple (a soul perhaps) is the ground. If the former construal is accepted, a conspicuous difficulty is that the condition of causal dependence between person-stages is absent. But this leaves such a view (...) open to an objection from the failure to provide a condition of individuation. If, on the other hand something like a soul is said to ground personal identity over time, such an account turns out to be more suited to a kind of continuity view. (shrink)
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) is a condition in which a person appears to possess more than one personality, and sometimes very many. Some recent criminal cases involving defendants with DID have resulted in "not guilty" verdicts, though the defense is not always successful in this regard. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Stephen Behnke have argued that we should excuse DID sufferers from responsibility, only if at the time of the act the person was insane (typically delusional); (...) otherwise the presumption should be that persons with DID are indeed responsible for their actions. We find their interpretation of DID and of the way in which the requirements for criminal insanity relate to this condition worrying and likely to result in injustice to DID sufferers. Our thesis is that persons with DID cannot be responsible for their actions if the usual features of the condition are present. A person with DID is a single person in the grip of a very serious mental disorder. By focusing on the features of DID which have, as we argue, the effect of deluding the patient, we try to show that such a person is unable to fulfill the ordinary conditions of responsible agency (namely, autonomy and self-control). (shrink)
A prospective introduction -- The received view -- Troubles with the received view -- Are propositional attitudes relations? -- Foundations of a measurement-theoretic account of the attitudes -- The basic measurement-theoretic account -- Elaboration and explication of the proposed measurement-theoretic account.
In a series of exquisite examples that could only have been gathered by a professional philosopher with an extraordinary respect for young minds, Gareth...
Effective agency, according to contemporary Kantians, requires a unity of purpose both at a time, in order that we may eliminate conflict among our motives, and over time, because many of the things we do form part of longer-term projects and make sense only in the light of these projects and life plans. Call this the unity of agency thesis. This thesis can be regarded as a normative constraint on accounts of personal identity and indeed on accounts of what it (...) is to have the life of a person in the broad, rather than narrowly biological sense. It is also a fundamental condition of social life that persons within society fulfill a range of longitudinal roles: parenthood is one such obvious example, as are teachers, health professionals, engineers, artists, and many others. The fulfillment of these and other valuable social roles requires that agents have the capacity to rationally conceive of themselves as engaged in these roles and subject to the demands of them. To be unable to fulfill any such longitudinal social roles is to have a life deficient in value. The unity of agency is thus, we argue, something we rationally strive for, and something to be morally promoted. Psychiatric states that undermine the unity of agency are morally and rationally disvaluable. Using the example of dissociation, we explain how one such state may have this undermining or disruptive effect on the unity of agency. The therapeutic ends for psychiatry in conditions involving such states are thus seen more globally as the restoration of effective agency, that is, unified agency. (shrink)
“A Liberal Account of Addiction‘ is a major contribution to the discussion of addiction, its treatment, and the social and policy issues which arise from it. Questioning as it does many generally accepted assumptions about addictive behavior, particularly the use of hard drugs, it will provoke even those who do not agree with it to rethink their positions. Many of its suggestions are relevant also, in my opinion, to thinking about other areas of psychiatric interest. Nevertheless, I want to argue (...) that its authors have perhaps not freed themselves sufficiently from some common assumptions, in particular about the nature of mental disorder, and that their argument might benefit from such liberation. The central assumption that I have in mind is that understanding human actions is nothing but understanding the brain activity that accompanies them. If so, then a pattern of behavior can count as a ’mental disorder’ in any clinically or legally relevant sense only if it is the result of a brain disease, causing a breakdown in normal brain functioning. Starting from this assumption, the authors seek to show, by means of evidence from neuroscience, that addiction to drugs does not have a unique ’neural substrate,’ distinct from that of any other kind of pleasure-seeking behavior. When we have a pleasurable experience of any kind, as they point out, dopamine is normally released within the brain. This, they say, activates the ’reward’ pathways, making the person more likely to repeat the behavior that gives rise to the pleasurable experience in questionÑwhether it is eating, sex, or injecting heroin. Addiction, they argue, is therefore just a tendency to repeat an intensely pleasurable experience, whatever the nature of that experience might be. The particular chemistry of the substance involved in this particular form of pleasure is, they argue, irrelevantÑall that matters is that the experience it gives someone is pleasant. Addiction, they. (shrink)
'Backsliding', 'weakness of, will', ' moral weakness', '"lack of self-restraint', 'lack of self-control'. Do all these have the same meaning ? Is there a philosophical problem here, and if so, what precisely is it? How is an account of what happens in cases to which these terms apply related to the meaning of the words, and to the philosophical problem? These are the questions which I shall try to discuss in this paper.
In our target article, we discussed the standards of evidence that could be used to identify adaptations, and argued that building an empirical case that certain features of a trait are best explained by exaptation, spandrel, or constraint requires the consideration, testing, and rejection of adaptationist hypotheses. We are grateful to the 31 commentators for their thoughtful insights. They raised important issues, including the meaning of “exaptation”; whether Gould and Lewontin's critique of adaptationism was primarily epistemological or ontological; the necessity, (...) sufficiency, or utility of design evidence, phylogenetic analyses, homology, and molecular genetics in distinguishing exaptations from adaptations; whether adaptationists accept adaptationist hypotheses too quickly; and the real utility of adaptationism to human behavioral science. We organize our response along the major points of the target article, in some situations defending our original claims and in others modifying them. While debate on these issues will undoubtedly continue, we are cautiously optimistic that the main points of the target article (as modified by our response) will help move the debate in a positive direction. (shrink)
Undercover marketing targets potential customers by concealing the commercial nature of an apparently social transaction. In a typical case an individual approaches a marketing target apparently to provide some information or advice about a product in a way that makes it seem like they are a fellow consumer. In another kind of case, a friend displays a product to you, and encourages its purchase, but fails to disclose their association with the marketing firm. We focus on this second type of (...) case and argue that the constitutive dispositions of friendship that provide for the development and maintenance of intimacy also render friends especially vulnerable to undercover marketing techniques and so to the exploitation of friendship for commercial ends. We show how this is corrupting both of the friendship and the commercial agent. (shrink)
We discuss Aristotle's "Categories" as an answer to Plato's One-over-Many argument. For Plato, F-ness is something "over against" particular F things; to predicate "F" of these things is to assert that they all stand in a certain relation to F-ness. Aristotle answers that predication is classification; and there being a classification of a certain sort is a fact correlative with there being things classifiable in the way the classification in question would classify them.
Children often refer to things ambiguously but learn not to from responding to clarification requests. We review and explore this learning process here. In Study 1, eighty-four 2- and 4-year-olds were tested for their ability to request stickers from either (a) a small array with one dissimilar distracter or (b) a large array containing similar distracters. When children made ambiguous requests, they received either general feedback or specific questions about which of two options they wanted. With training, children learned to (...) produce more complex object descriptions and did so faster in the specific feedback condition. They also tended to provide more information when requesting stickers from large arrays. In Study 2, we varied only distracter similarity during training and then varied array size in a generalization test. Children found it harder to learn in this case. In the generalization test, 4-year-olds were more likely to provide information (a) when it was needed because distracters were similar to the target and (b) when the array size was greater (regardless of need for information). We discuss how clear cues to potential ambiguity are needed for children to learn to tailor their referring expression to context and how several cues of heuristic value (e.g., more distracters > say more) can promote the efficiency of communication while language is developing. Finally, we consider whether it would be worthwhile drawing on the human learning process when developing algorithms for the production of referring expressions. (shrink)
1 Adaptationism is a research strategy that seeks to identify adaptations and the specific selective forces that drove their evolution in past environments. Since the mid-1970s, paleontologist Stephen J. Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin have been critical of adaptationism, especially as applied toward understanding human behavior and cognition. Perhaps the most prominent criticism they made was that adaptationist explanations were analogous to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (outlandish explanations for questions such as how the elephant got its trunk). Since storytelling (...) (through the generation of hypotheses and the making of inferences) is an inherent part of science, the criticism refers to the acceptance of stories without sufficient empirical evidence. In particular, Gould, Lewontin, and their colleagues argue that adaptationists often use inappropriate evidentiary standards for identifying adaptations and their functions, and that they often fail to consider alternative hypotheses to adaptation. Playing prominently in both of these criticisms are the concepts of constraint, spandrel, and exaptation. In this article we discuss the standards of evidence that could be used to identify adaptations and when and how they may be appropriately used. Moreover, building an empirical case that certain features of a trait are best explained by exaptation, spandrel, or constraint requires demonstrating that the trait's features cannot be better accounted for by adaptationist hypotheses. Thus, we argue that the testing of alternatives requires the consideration, testing, and systematic rejection of adaptationist hypotheses. Where possible, we illustrate our points with examples taken from human behavior and cognition. Key Words: adaptation; ADHD; brain allometry; constraint; epistemology; evolutionary psychology; exaptation; female orgasm; optimization; special design; waist-hip ratio (WHR). Footnotes1 The authors contributed equally to this paper. Order of authorship was determined alphabetically. Correspondence may be addressed to any of the authors. (shrink)
Anselm’s argument for the existence of God in Proslogion 2 has a little-noticed feature: It can be properly formulated only by beings who have the ability to think of things and refer to things independently of whether or not they exist in reality. The authors explore this cognitive ability and try to make clear the role it plays in the ontological argument. Then, we offer a new version of the ontological argument, which, we argue, is sound: it is valid, has (...) true premises, and does not beg any questions against the atheist. However, the new reconstruction of the argument falls short of Anselm’s goal of producing “a single argument that would require no other for its proof than itself alone; and alone would suffice to demonstrate that God exists.” The new reconstruction requires a subsidiary argument to show that God exists in the understanding. The subsidiary argument relies on premises that are both contingent and known a posteriori. However, the somewhat amplified argument, if it is sound as the authors believe it to be, does show that God exists in reality. Moreover, the new reconstruction escapes an important recent criticism by Peter Millican (2004, 2007) against ontological arguments generally. (shrink)
How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This book seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine. The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an abstract (...) theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means for medicine to be "scientific". The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readily than others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially other people, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry. Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health. (shrink)
This paper illustrates some of the exciting and interesting philosophical discussions we can have with children when we let them develop the thread of the conversation in their own ways. The author discusses the virtue of patience when doing philosophy with children, and the importance of letting the rhythms of the discussion unfold without undue adult interference. Adults (and especially teachers) often attempt to control the ways in which children discuss issues with one another. The author reminds us of how (...) powerful it can be for a philosophical conversation among children to develop organically. and of how allowing silences to occur can inspire further philosophical explorations among the children. (shrink)
In a recent paper Paul Vincent Spade suggests that, although the medieval doctrine of the modes of personal supposition originally had something to do with the rest of the theory of supposition, it became, by the 14th century, an unrelated theory with no question to answer. By contrast, I argue that the theory of the modes of personal supposition was meant to provide a way of making understandable the idea that a general term in a categorical proposition can be used (...) to refer to the individual things that fall under it. Once that idea had been made acceptable, truth conditons for the various forms of categorical proposition could be given without any specific appeal to the ideas of descent and ascent in terms of which the modes had been defined. (shrink)
We present a framework for machine implementation of families of non-classical logics with Kripke-style semantics. We decompose a logic into two interacting parts, each a natural deduction system: a base logic of labelled formulae, and a theory of labels characterizing the properties of the Kripke models. By appropriate combinations we capture both partial and complete fragments of large families of non-classical logics such as modal, relevance, and intuitionistic logics. Our approach is modular and supports uniform proofs of soundness, completeness and (...) proof normalization. We have implemented our work in the Isabelle Logical Framework. (shrink)
Augustine was undeniably a dogmatic thinker, but he also had an “aporetic side” which makes him more relevant to Christian philosophers today than isgenerally recognized. Augustine’s first experience of reading philosophy came from Cicero’s Hortensius, from which Augustine gained an appreciation for philosophical scepticism which he never lost. Thus, in all of his works and in all periods of his life, Augustine’s characteristic way of doing philosophy is aporetic, rather than either systematic or speculative. Paradoxically, Augustine’s faith in the truth (...) of Holy Scripture and Church Doctrine gave him a freedom to explore theological and philosophical conundra and, if he could not resolve them, admit frankly that he could not do so. Like Socrates, Augustine was wise partly because he admitted to being puzzled about things that others took for granted. Some of the perplexities which occupied him are: (a) the nature of time; (b) whether it is possible to show someone (without using words) what walking is if one is already walking; (c) whether one is responsible for what one does in one’s dreams; (d) whether one can think about sadness or pleasure by having an image of it in one’s mind, but without experiencing any sadness or pleasure in the thought, and (e) (perhaps most famously, in the Confessions) how one can want something that he does not believe to be good. (shrink)
Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), Fodor and McLaughlin (1990) and McLaughlin (1993) challenge connectionists to explain systematicity without simply implementing a classical architecture. In this paper I argue that what makes the challenge difficult for connectionists to meet has less to do with what is to be explained than with what is to count as an explanation. Fodor et al. are prepared to admit as explanatory, accounts of a sort that only classical models can provide. If connectionists are to meet the (...) challenge, they are going to have to insist on the propriety of changing what counts as an explanation of systematicity. Once that is done, there would seem to be as yet no reason to suppose that connectionists are unable to explain systematicity. (shrink)
In previous work we gave an approach, based on labelled natural deduction, for formalizing proof systems for a large class of propositional modal logics that includes K, D, T, B, S4, S4.2, KD45, and S5. Here we extend this approach to quantified modal logics, providing formalizations for logics with varying, increasing, decreasing, or constant domains. The result is modular with respect to both properties of the accessibility relation in the Kripke frame and the way domains of individuals change between worlds. (...) Our approach has a modular metatheory too; soundness, completeness and normalization are proved uniformly for every logic in our class. Finally, our work leads to a simple implementation of a modal logic theorem prover in a standard logical framework. (shrink)
We compare Colman's proposed “psychological game theory” with the existing literature on psychological games (Geanakoplos et al. 1989), in which beliefs and intentions assume a prominent role. We also discuss experimental evidence on intentions, with a particular emphasis on reciprocal behavior, as well as recent efforts to show that such behavior is consistent with social evolution.
Although hailing from cognate analytical schools, the contributors to Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter’s edited volume Conversation and Cognition hold a remarkable diversity of views on the nature of “mental states” and their import for the purposes of analyzing naturally occurring interaction. I offer a critical analysis of some of the contributors’ discussions of cognition in social interaction in an effort to clarify some obstinate issues with respect to the meanings of words in our cognitive vocabulary (e.g. “thought” and (...) “realization”) and their identification in analyses of conversation. (shrink)
Anthony Kenny says it is impossible to want what one already has and knows one has. We present a counter-example and then suggest that Kenny may have been misled by the fact that wanting expresses itself in goal-directed behavior. From the truism that one's behavior cannot be directed toward a goal that one knows one has already attained, Kenny may have been led to suppose that behavior directed toward an as yet unattained goal cannot express one's desire for what one (...) has and knows one has. (shrink)
This paper defends the commonsense conception of linguistic competence according to which linguistic competence involves propositional knowledge of language. More specifically, the paper defends three propositions challenged by Devitt in his Ignorance af Language. First, Chomskian linguists were right to embrace this commonsense conception of linguistic cornpetence. Second, the grammars that these linguists propose make a substantive claim about the computational processes that are presumed to constitute a speaker’s linguistic competence. Third, Chomskian linguistics is indeed a subfield of psychology, in (...) the business of characterizing the linguistic competence of speakers. (shrink)
In De trinitate X Augustine seeks to discover the nature of mind (mens). As if recalling Plato’s Paradox of Inquiry, he wonders how such a search can be coherently understood. Rejecting the idea that the mind knows itself only indirectly, or partially, or by description, he insists that nothing is so present to the mind as itself. Yet it is open to the mind to perfect its knowledge of itself by coming to realize that its nature is to be only (...) what it is certain that it is. (shrink)
The heart is a huge old barnacled whale, Vastly outsize and cumbersome, Encased in a mountain of deadweight flesh, Lugubrious, peering out of her carnal tomb with little wrinkled eye, Unable to encompass her own immensity. Yet this great gravid tender yearning creature lies Undetected, invisible, under the waters of appearance.
Youth forums are a favoured means for encouraging youth participation. Taking many forms, they usually describe groups of young people who come together in committees to discuss issues relating to their communities. Adults establish many youth forums largely because they are perceived to provide tangible opportunities deemed to enable ongoing participation rather than because of demand from young people themselves. Recent evidence suggests, however, that youth forums are often an inappropriate way of engaging many young people, especially those who are (...) traditionally hardest to reach. This paper explores the ethical and methodological challenges facing those agencies who wish to behave in an inclusive manner, yet in so doing establish structures and bureaucracies that sideline many young people, further obfuscating their voices in local decision making. Alternative ways forward for engaging young people are suggested. (shrink)
Arms strained wide, I try to encompass, to take you to me. I track you in cloud chambers, Scan you through reflectors and refractors. Elusive One. Not a single grassy acre can my heart contain.
Elaborating on views I have expressed elsewhere, I argue that the common-sense notion of linguistic competence as a kind of knowledge is both required by common-sense explanatory and justificatory practice and furthermore fully compatible with the non-intentional characterization of linguistic competence provided by current linguistic theory, which is itself non-intentional.
Psychotherapy and counselling services are now available on-line, and expanding rapidly. Yet there appears almost no ethical analysis of this on-line mode of delivery of such professional services. In this paper I present such an analysis by considering the limitations on-line contact imposes on the nature of the professional–client relationship. The analysis proceeds via the contrast between the face-to-face case and the on-line case. At the core of the problem must be the recognition that on-line interaction imposes a physical barrier (...) largely permitting only those disclosures of self we choose to make available, and greatly restricting the range of involuntary features and behaviours. I show why this is problematic, first, for the development of a close professional–client relationship, with particular emphasis on such failures as diagnosis and monitoring of the patient. Second I describe the importance of the development of professional character, and of how the on-line environment fails to provide a context for such character traits to emerge and develop. (shrink)
Plato and Aristotle thought that philosophy begins in the perplexed recognition that there are significant puzzles one does not know how to deal with. Some such puzzles can be expressed in questions of the form, ‘How is it possible that p?’, e.g., ‘How is it possible that the world had an absolute beginning?’ I discuss an example of young children asking that last question and go on, with further examples, to make a plea for cultivating such questions as an educational (...) objective, whether the perplexity-expressing questions themselves be scientific, philosophical, or both. (shrink)
We have argued elsewhere (2002) that moral responsibility over time depends in part upon the having of psychological connections which facilitate forms of self-control. In this paper we explore the importance of mental time travel – our ordinary ability to mentally travel to temporal locations outside the present, involving both memory of our personal past and the ability to imagine ourselves in the future – to our agential capacities for planning and control. We suggest that in many individuals with dissociative (...) disorders, forms of amnesia, or other frontal lobe damage, our capacity for mental time travel is impaired, resulting in commensurate losses to agency, autonomy, and a forensic condition essential for holding persons responsible: in legal terms, the capacity for mens rea. (shrink)
In this article I argue that insanity defences such as M’Nagten should be abolished in favour of a defence of failed agency. It is not insanity per se, or any other empirical condition, which constitutes the moral reason for exculpation. Rather, we should first recognize the conditions for being a responsible moral agent. These include some capacity to direct and control one’s behavior, a non-delusional component, and the capacity to recognize that one’s behavior is expressive of what they have reason (...) to be doing. When either of these fail in a case involving alleged criminal behavior the defence of failed agency may be appealed to. There may be many causes, including and besides insanity, that give rise to use of the defence of failed agency. (shrink)
This article highlights Gareth Matthews's contributions to the field of philosophy for young children, noting especially the inventiveness of his style of engagement with children and his confidence in children's ability to analyze perplexing issues, from cosmology to death and dying. I relate here my experiences in introducing philosophical topics to adolescents, to show how Matthews's work can be successfully extended to older students, and I recommend taking philosophy outside the university as a way to foster critical thinking (...) in young students and to improve the public status of the profession. (shrink)
Background: Studies of sexual conditioning typically focus on the development of conditioned responses to a stimulus that precedes and has become associated with a sexual unconditioned stimulus (US). Such a sexually conditioned stimulus (CS) provides the opportunity for feed-forward regulation of sexual behavior, which improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the sexual activity. Objective and Design: The present experiments were conducted to provide evidence of such feed-forward regulation of sexual behavior in laboratory studies with domesticated quail by measuring how many (...) fertilized eggs were produced by the female after the sexual encounter. During the conditioning phase, male and female quail received a conditioned stimulus paired with the opportunity to copulate with each other. Results: Sexual conditioning increased the number of eggs that were fertilized as a consequence of copulation, especially if both the male and the female were exposed to the sexual CS. This conditioned fertility effect occurred with a range of CS durations and CS types. The conditioned fertility effect also occurred in situations involving sexual competition. When two males copulated with the same female, DNA fingerprinting showed that the male whose sexual encounter was signaled by a sexual CS was responsible for most of the resulting offspring. Sexual conditioning also reduced the first-male disadvantage in fertilization that occurs when two males copulate with the same female separated by several hours. Another significant finding was that sexual conditioning attenuated the usual drop in fertilization rate that occurs when the same male copulates with two females in succession. Conclusion: These results show that sexual conditioning increases the number of offspring that are produced in both isolated male-female encounters and in situations that involve two males copulating with the same female or one male copulating with more than one female. By increasing fertilization rates, sexual conditioning can alter genetic transmission across generations and shape evolutionary change. Keywords: sexual conditioning; sexual learning; conditioned fertility; sexual competition; quail; pavlovian conditioning (Published: 15 March 2012) Citation: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2012, 2 : 17333 - DOI: 10.3402/snp.v2i0.17333. (shrink)
