In the past few years, a body of ideas based on political economy theory has been built up by North and Weingast, Olson, Przeworski, and Acemoglu and Robinson. One theme that emerges from this literature concerns the transition to democracy: why would dominant elites give up oligarchic power? This article addresses this question by considering a formal model of an authoritarian regime, and then examining three historical regimes: the Argentine junta of 1976—83; Francoist Spain, 1938—75; the Soviet system, 1924—91. We (...) argue that these historical analyses suggest that party dictatorships are more institutionally durable than military or fascist ones. Key Words: democratic transition • authoritarian regimes • rational choice theory. (shrink)

Constitutions serve (at least) two central functions. One is to settle certain controversies by offering a definitive solution, such as adoption of a presidential or parliamentary system, a one-house or two-house legislature, or guaranteeing a certain term of years to judicial appointees. Not surprisingly, there is rarely litigation about such solutions, even if one finds them troublesome; instead, one can suggest amending the constitution or even replacing it. A second function is precisely to engender litigation by addressing certain issues—very often (...) involving rights—that don't lend themselves to the kinds of definitive textual solutions similar to those involving structural features of a polity. If the first constitution can be described as a “constitution of settlement,” this second constitution is a “constitution of legal conversation” inasmuch as lawyers constantly dispute the meanings to be assigned such terms as “equal protection,” “human dignity,” and the like. But how does this apply to the preambles commonly, though not always, found in constitutions? Preambles often claim to evoke what binds together the society for whom the constitution is being drafted—religion, ethnicity, histories, languages, or commitments to norms, including universalistic ones. But to what extent are such claims of unity attempts by political elites to marginalize sectors of the society that do not in fact share the attributes in question? In any event, there is nothing “innocent” about constitutional preambles, and they are well worth taking seriously whether or not they are useful to lawyers engaged in litigation. (shrink)

Predictive processing approaches to the mind are increasingly popular in the cognitive sciences. This surge of interest is accompanied by a proliferation of philosophical arguments, which seek to either extend or oppose various aspects of the emerging framework. In particular, the question of how to position predictive processing with respect to enactive and embodied cognition has become a topic of intense debate. While these arguments are certainly of valuable scientific and philosophical merit, they risk underestimating the variety of approaches gathered (...) under the predictive label. Here, we first present a basic review of neuroscientific, cognitive, and philosophical approaches to PP, to illustrate how these range from solidly cognitivist applications—with a firm commitment to modular, internalistic mental representation—to more moderate views emphasizing the importance of ‘body-representations’, and finally to those which fit comfortably with radically enactive, embodied, and dynamic theories of mind. Any nascent predictive processing theory must take into account this continuum of views, and associated theoretical commitments. As a final point, we illustrate how the Free Energy Principle attempts to dissolve tension between internalist and externalist accounts of cognition, by providing a formal synthetic account of how internal ‘representations’ arise from autopoietic self-organization. The FEP thus furnishes empirically productive process theories by which to guide discovery through the formal modelling of the embodied mind. (shrink)

"Whether you run your own business or work for someone else, you've probably got a lot on your plate. Along with the portion of your work that you truly feel like doing comes a generous helping of things you'd rather not do. As consultants, Steve Levinson and Chris Cooper have seen countless clients struggle--and often fail--to do the many success-producing things they know they should do but don't feel like doing. The Power to Get Things Done will teach you (...) how to consistently turn your good intentions into action so that you can be as successful as possible in the work you do. Don't feel like filing those pesky tax forms or making the follow-up calls you've been putting off? The Power to Get Things Done will show you how to get yourself--and keep yourself--in gear, "--Amazon.com. (shrink)

Jones's system of constraints promises interesting insights into the typology of kin term systems. Three problems arise: (1) the conflation of categories with algorithms that assign them threatens to weaken the typological predictions; (2) OT-type constraints have little psychological plausibility; (3) the conflation of kin-term systems and kinship systems may underplay the “utility function” character of real kinship in action.

This chapter contains sections titled: I Common Schooling is Instrumental for Multicultural Education II Multicultural Education is Instrumental for Common Schooling III Common Schooling Expresses the Multicultural Ideal IV Multicultural Education and Common Schooling Face Similar Challenges Note References.

This book, which is based on the formulations of general semantics, offers useful information on a wide variety of topics (e.g., managing stress, enhancing creativity, communicating more effectively). It also provides cogent analysis of social issues (e.g., America's current foreign policy, communication in the internet age); offers ideas to help people be more successful at work (e.g., "How to Become a More Successful Leader," "How to Effectively Manage Your Career"); and includes suggestions to help children be more successful in school (...) (e.g.," Reducing School-Age Bullying," "Anger and Violence Prevention"). (shrink)

An important objection to political liberalism is that it provides no means by which to decide conflicts between public and non-public reasons. This article develops John Rawls' idea of `reasoning from conjecture' as one way to argue for a commitment to public reason. Reasoning from conjecture is a form of non-public justification that allows political liberals to reason from within the comprehensive views of at least some unreasonable citizens. After laying out the basic features of this form of non-public justification, (...) this article responds to three objections based on concerns about insincerity, cultural imperialism, and the epistemic authority of those who reason from conjecture. (shrink)

The notion of ‘durability’ plays a central role in the discourse, policies, and practices surrounding forced displacement. Yet, for all the talk of ‘durable solutions’ to refugee situations, durability is in many ways the quality most conspicuously absent in refugees' everyday lives and living spaces. As the world has grown progressively more inured to the practice of using provisional spaces of transit as permanent sites of residence, displaced persons are increasingly finding themselves trapped in spaces marked by a kind of (...) permanent temporariness. In this article, I sketch three different ways in which living for long periods of time in temporary spaces can harm inhabitants: first, I argue that non-durability in the home can undermine cognitive function; second, that it can attenuate various forms of agency; and third, that it fails to furnish a ground on which refugees can build meaningful lives and futures for themselves. I conclude by arguing that the deprivation of durable living conditions is not only harmful, but wrongful. (shrink)

A common objection to the idea of public reason is that it cannot resolve fundamental political issues because it excludes too many moral considerations from the political domain. Following an important but often overlooked distinction drawn by Gerald Gaus, there are two ways to understand this objection. First, public reason is often said to be inconclusive because it fails to generate agreement on fundamental political issues. Second, and more radically, some critics have claimed that public reason is indeterminate because it (...) cannot provide any citizen with sufficient reason(s) for making important political decisions. Against the first of these objections, I argue that the purpose of public reason is not to end reasonable disagreement. Rather, it is to provide a suitable framework of values and principles within which citizens may resolve their moral and political differences. Against the second objection, I argue, first, that the indeterminacy of public reason is much less common than its inconclusiveness; and, second, that there are second-order decision-making strategies that may enable citizens to cope with cases of indeterminacy. The incompleteness of public reason, whether it takes the form of inconclusiveness or indeterminacy, is not a reason for citizens to abandon their commitment to public justification. (shrink)

Encampment continues to be one of the dominant modes of responding to refugee situations. I suggest that we would do well to conceive of the wrongfulness of refugee camps not just in terms of their effects, but also in terms of their function. I endorse the view that camps currently function primarily to contain displaced persons and develop a novel conception of the wrong of encampment in terms of that function. Drawing on Heidegger's account of the spatiality proper to different (...) entities, I argue that practices of containment reduce refugees to the status of objects to be, in effect, immobilized and stored away for an indeterminate amount of time. (shrink)

Contemplating Art is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson. The twenty-four essays range over issues in general aesthetics and those relating to specific arts--in particular music, film, and literature. It will appeal not only to philosophers but also to musicologists, literary theorists, art critics, and reflective lovers of the arts.

Respiratory rhythms sustain biological life, governing the homeostatic exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Until recently, however, the influence of breathing on the brain has largely been overlooked. Yet new evidence demonstrates that the act of breathing exerts a substantive, rhythmic influence on perception, emotion, and cognition, largely through the direct modulation of neural oscillations. Here, we synthesize these findings to motivate a new predictive coding model of respiratory brain coupling, in which breathing rhythmically modulates both local and global neural (...) gain, to optimize cognitive and affective processing. Our model further explains how respiratory rhythms interact with the topology of the functional connectome, and we highlight key implications for the computational psychiatry of disordered respiratory and interoceptive inference. (shrink)

NoteThe following was written as a commentary on an article we published in our Spring 2023 issue, “’Comprehensive Healthcare for America’: Using the Insights of Behavioral Economics to Transform the U. S. Healthcare System,” by Paul C. Sorum, Christopher Stein, and Dale L. Moore. This commentary should have appeared alongside that article. We apologize to the authors and our readers for the error.

Various theorists contend that we may live in a computer simulation. David Chalmers in turn argues that the simulation hypothesis is a metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of our reality, rather than a sceptical scenario. We use recent work on consciousness to motivate new doubts about both sets of arguments. First, we argue that if either panpsychism or panqualityism is true, then the only way to live in a simulation may be as brains-in-vats, in which case it is unlikely that (...) we live in a simulation. We then argue that if panpsychism or panqualityism is true, then viable simulation hypotheses are substantially sceptical scenarios. We conclude that the nature of consciousness has wide-ranging implications for simulation arguments. (shrink)

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in relativism. Proponents have defended various accounts that seek to model the truth-conditions of certain propositions along the lines of standard possible world semantics. The central challenge for such views has been to explain what advantage they have over contextualist theories with regard to the possibility of disagreement. I will press this worry against Max Kölbel’s account of faultless disagreement. My case will proceed along two distinct but connected lines. First, I (...) will argue that the sense of faultlessness made possible by his relativism conflicts with our intuitive understanding of disagreement. And second, that his meta-epistemological commitments are at odds with the socio-epistemic function of disagreement. This latter problem for relativistic accounts of truth has thus far been largely ignored in the literature. (shrink)

This article discusses an interdisciplinary and community-engaged public health law course that was developed as part of The Future of Public Health Law Education faculty fellowship program. Law and public health students worked collaboratively to assist a local health department in preparing for the law-related aspects of Public Health Accreditation Board review.

An influential strand of neo-Aristotelianism, represented by writers such as Philippa Foot, holds that moral virtue is a form of natural goodness in human beings, analogous to deep roots in oak trees or keen vision in hawks. Critics, however, have argued that such a view cannot get off the ground, because the neo-Aristotelian account of natural normativity is untenable in light of a Darwinian account of living things. This criticism has been developed most fully by William Fitzpatrick in his book (...) Teleology and the Norms of Nature . In this paper, I defend the neo-Aristotelian account of natural normativity, focusing on Fitzpatrick's arguments. I argue that a natural goodness view is not impugned by an evolutionary account. Nor can neo-Aristotelian life form judgments be replaced by an evolutionary view of living things. (shrink)

The Bayesian brain hypothesis, as formalized by the free-energy principle, is ascendant in cognitive science. But, how does the Bayesian brain obtain prior beliefs? Veissière and colleagues argue that sociocultural interaction is one important source. We offer a complementary model in which “interoceptive self-inference” guides the estimation of expected uncertainty both in ourselves and in our social conspecifics.

This essay defends Aristotelian naturalism against the objection that it is naïvely optimistic, and contrary to empirical research, to suppose that virtues like justice are naturally good while vices like injustice are naturally defective. This objection depends upon the mistaken belief that our knowledge of human goodness in action and choice must come from the natural sciences. In fact, our knowledge of goodness in human action and character depends upon a practical understanding that is possessed by someone not qua scientist (...) but qua practically wise person. I spell out some key features of this knowledge of human form, including its relation to practical reasons and its similarity to the “know-how” of crafts-persons. My account of virtue as knowledge of human form sheds light on the Aristotelian thesis that humans live according to an understanding of their own form. My account also clarifies the kinship and the divergence between Aristotelian and Kantian ethics. (shrink)

In the 20th century, public health was responsible for most of the 30-year increase in average life expectancy in the United States.1 Most of the significant advances in public health required the combined effort of scientists and attorneys. Scientists identified public health threats and the means of controlling them, but attorneys and policymakers helped convert those scientific discoveries into laws that could change the behavior of industries or individuals at a population level. In tobacco control, public health scientists made the (...) groundbreaking discovery that smoking caused lung cancer, but attorneys and policymakers developed and implemented the policies and litigation strategies that helped reduce smoking rates by more than half over the past 50 years. (shrink)

A very liberal sexual ethics now holds sway in Western culture, such that mutual consent alone is widely seen as morally legitimizing almost any sexual activity between adults. It is further commonly assumed by both philosophers and nonphilosophers that arguing for some alternative to liberal sexual ethics requires appeal to ethical commands specific to some religious tradition or other. The purpose of this paper is to challenge that assumption by suggesting some purely naturalistic and independently-plausible premises that can be used (...) to argue for a much more conservative system of sexual ethics than is widely accepted today. (shrink)

I first show why Davidson was wrong to maintain that there is no such thing as metaphorical meaning, that which paraphrases strive to capture. I then sketch a conception of metaphors as utterances in contexts, and suggest how such utterances can acquire metaphorical meanings despite there being no semantic rules for the projection of such meanings. I next urge the essentiality of a metaphor's verbal formulation to its being the metaphor it is, and I conclude with some reflections on common (...) and uncommon metaphors, and on the difficulty of finding strings of words resistant to metaphorical construal. (shrink)

The central claim of Aristotelian naturalism is that moral goodness is a kind of species-specific natural goodness. Aristotelian naturalism has recently enjoyed a resurgence in the work of philosophers such as Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Michael Thompson. However, any view that takes moral goodness to be a type of natural goodness faces a challenge: Granting that moral goodness is natural goodness for human beings, why should we care about being good human beings? Given that we are rational creatures who (...) can ‘step back’ from our nature, why should we see human nature as authoritative for us? This is the authority-of-nature challenge. In this essay, I state this challenge clearly, identify its deep motivation, and distinguish it from other criticisms of Aristotelian naturalism. I also articulate what I consider the best response, which I term the practical reason response. This response, however, exposes Aristotelian naturalism to a new criticism – that it has abandoned the naturalist claim that moral goodness is species-specific natural goodness. Thus, I argue, Aristotelian naturalists appear to face a dilemma: Either they cannot answer the authority-of-nature challenge, or in meeting the challenge they must abandon naturalism. Aristotelian naturalists might overcome this dilemma, but doing so is harder than some Aristotelians have supposed. In the final sections of the paper, I examine the difficulties in overcoming the dilemma, and I suggest ways that Aristotelians might answer the authority-of-nature challenge while preserving naturalism. (shrink)