This paper examines the concept of ‘openness with patients’ from the stand-point of the limitations of biomedical ethics. Initially we review contemporary critiques of bioethics and, in particular, of principlism; we relate how other; somewhat neglected, forms of medical ethics can yield useful information and provide moral guidance. The main section of the paper then shows how a bioethical approach to openness misses the social context in our example, the viewpoints of patients; we present some of the increasing wealth of (...) research evidence which points towards patients wanting more information and a greater degree of openness. (shrink)
Why is female violence a taboo? We suggest that both men and women actively contribute to the creation of this stigma. Men may benefit because nonaggressive women may make better mothers and be more faithful and fertile. Females may benefit by downplaying their aggressive nature because they will be perceived as more valuable mates and because they will be more accepted within female social groups.
I interpret and defend Sellars’ intemalist view of perceptual justification which argues that perceivers have evidence for their perceptual beliefs that includes a higher-order belief about the circumstances in which those beliefs arise, and an epistemic belief about the reliability of beliefs that are formed in those circumstances. The pattem of inference that occurs in ordinary cases of perception is elicited.I then defend this account of perceptual evidence against 1) AIston’s objection that ordinary perceivers are not as critical and reflective (...) as this view requires them to be; and 2) the charge that intemalism leads to various forms of infinite regress and circular reasoning. It is granted that subjects must have further grounds for their justifying reasons, and an attempt is made to identify these second-order reasons. In particular, I argue that epistemic beliefs are grounded in the perceiver’s awareness that his present experience-cum-conditions fits into a larger pattem of similar past experiences that were reliably connected with their objects. (shrink)
Propositionalism is the view that intentional attitudes, such as belief, are relations to propositions. Propositionalists argue that propositionalism follows from the intuitive validity of certain kinds of inferences involving attitude reports. Jubien (2001) argues powerfully against propositions and sketches some interesting positive proposals, based on Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment, about how to accommodate “propositional phenomena” without appeal to propositions. This paper argues that none of Jubien’s proposals succeeds in accommodating an important range of propositional phenomena, such as the (...) aforementioned validity of attitude-report inferences. It then shows that the notion of a predication act-type, which remains importantly Russellian in spirit, is sufficient to explain the range of propositional phenomena in question, in particular the validity of attitude-report inferences. The paper concludes with a discussion of whether predication act-types are really just propositions by another name. (shrink)
Quine introduced a famous distinction between the ‘notional’ sense and the ‘relational’ sense of certain attitude verbs. The distinction is both intuitive and sound but is often conflated with another distinction Quine draws between ‘dyadic’ and ‘triadic’ (or higher degree) attitudes. I argue that this conflation is largely responsible for the mistaken view that Quine’s account of attitudes is undermined by the problem of the ‘exportation’ of singular terms within attitude contexts. Quine’s system is also supposed to suffer from the (...) problem of ‘suspended judgement with continued belief’. I argue that this criticism fails to take account of a crucial presupposition of Quine’s about the connection between thought and language. The aim of the paper is to defend the spirit of Quine’s account of attitudes by offering solutions to these two problems. (shrink)
In Unsimple truths, Sandra D. Mitchell examines the historical context of current scientific practices and elaborates the challenges complexity has since posed to status quo science and policymaking. Mitchell criticizes models of science inspired by Newtonian physics and argues for a pragmatistic, anti-universalist approach to science. In this review, I focus on what I find to be the most important point of the book, Mitchell’s argument for the conceptual independence of compositional materialism and descriptive fundamentalism. Along the way, I provide (...) a description of Mitchell’s overall project and a road map of the book. (shrink)
The existence of object-dependent thoughts has been doubted on the grounds that reference to such thoughts is unnecessary or 'redundant' in the psychological explanation of intentional action. This paper argues to the contrary that reference to object-dependent thoughts is necessary to the proper psychological explanation of intentional action upon objects. Section I sets out the argument for the alleged explanatory redundancy of object-dependent thoughts; an argument which turns on the coherence of an alternative 'dual-component' model of explanation. Section II rebuts (...) this argument by showing the dual-component model to be incoherent precisely because of its exclusion of object-dependent thoughts. Section III concludes with a conjecture about the further possible significance of object-dependent thoughts for the prediction of action. (shrink)
This paper argues that Twin Earth twins belong to the same psychological natural kind, but that the reason for this is not that the causal powers of mental states supervene on local neural structure. Fodor’s argument for this latter thesis is criticized and found to rest on a confusion between it and the claim that Putnamian and Burgean type relational psychological properties do not affect the causal powers of the mental states that have them. While it is true that Putnamian (...) and Burgean type relational psychological properties do not affect causal powers, it is false that no relational psychological properties do. Examples of relational psychological properties that do affect causal powers are given and psychological laws are sketched that subsume twins in virtue of them instantiating these relational properties rather than them sharing the narrow contents of their thoughts. (shrink)
Abstract According to Russellianism, the content of a Russellian thought, in which a person ascribes a monadic property to an object, can be represented as an ordered couple of the object and the property. A consequence of this is that it is not possible for a person to believe that a is F and not to believe b is F, when a=b. Many critics of Russellianism suppose that this is possible and thus that Russellianism is false. Several arguments for this (...) claim are criticized and it is argued that Russellians need not appeal to representational notions in order to defeat them. Contrary to popular opinion, the prospects for a pure Russellianism, a Russellianism without representations, are in fact very good. (shrink)
Augustine tells us in the Confessions that his reading of Cicero's Hortensius at the age of nineteen aroused in him a burning 'passion for the wisdom of eternal truth'. He was inspired 'to love wisdom itself, whatever it might be, and to search for it, pursue it, hold it, and embrace it firmly'. And thus he embarked on his arduous journey to the truth, which was at the same time a conversion to Catholic Christianity, and which culminated twelve years later (...) in his experience in the garden in Milan. In the first part of this paper I will trace Augustine's search for intellectual knowledge and truth -- the pathway from Manicheeism to Catholicism by which he achieves what he takes to be a true conception of God. Consideration will be given to the way in which his intellectual progress affects and is affected by the conative side of his nature -- his desires, habits and affections. I will then ask whether the insight into God's nature that Augustine achieves suffices to give him the wisdom that he seeks, and will consider his novel suggestion that it does not. We will see that Augustine attempts to set out additional, non-intellectual criteria for attaining knowledge of God -- where 'knowledge' has a richer sense that involves 'holding' the truth, and 'embracing it fully'. Augustine's conversion to the truth essentially involves a reorienting of the will, a radical change in attitude and motive. My second concern is with Augustine's conception of how his own will functions in his conversion. Clearly he thinks of his conversion as a process of change within the whole self, but one that culminates in a final act of will. His highly dramatized and metaphorical description of the struggle that goes on within him leading to his final decision is a repository of insight into human willing. I will attempt to elicit from the text of the Confessions Augustine's conception of the will -- whether it functions as liberum arbitrium, capable of choosing between presented alternatives, or simply as the executive organ of reason or desire. Secondly, I will consider the extent to which Augustine views himself as contributing by his overall process of conversion and to the final moment of decision. Consideration of Augustine's participation in the process must take into account his explicit recognition that he is in St Paul's predicament of not being able to do what he wants to do. The relevant questions are : What does Augustine do to bring about his conversion and Is his final decision something that he accomplishes by his own effort and striving? (shrink)
While there is virtually a consensus among contemporary philosophers of perception that some form of direct realism is true, there is less than complete agreement about whether normal, direct perceptions involve mental inferences in any sense. In taking another look at this recurrent question, my aim is twofold: first, to examine some of the arguments and evidences that have been offered in favor of inferences and to see if they can be accommodated within the direct realist framework, and second, to (...) attempt to clarify and defend the insight of direct realism that normal perceptions are noninferential. (shrink)
Wal-Mart received widespread praise for its response to Hurricane Katrina when it hit the Louisiana coast in August 2005 and low prices at the world’s largest retailer are estimated to save consumers billions of dollars a year. Nonetheless, it was coming under increasing criticism for corebusiness practices, ranging from detrimental effects on communities when Wal-Mart stores are established, to abusive labour practices, to alleged sourcing from sweatshops. This case looks at the benefits and the potentially harmful consequences of the Wal-Mart (...) business model. The focus is on supply chain issues and, more specifically, a lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) charging that Wal-Mart failed to meet contractual obligations specified in its Standards for Suppliers Agreement. However, the retailer must respond to a range of criticisms that chief executive Lee Scott recognizes are harming its reputation. Scott asks, in reference to Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina, “what would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?” More fundamentally, the case asks, how sustainable is Wal-Mart’s business model? (shrink)
The idea examined here is that the development of moral ability shares important similarities with the development of conceptual thinking as outlined in the work of Lev Vygotsky. Most notably, the mature forms of both processes are ways of constructing meaning that are not governed by pre-established modes of behaviour. The principal suggestion here is that Vygotsky's theory of concept formation can be used as a generative model for understanding the development of moral ability in a way that challenges the (...) notion of morality as rule-following behaviour. Understanding moral ability as a present-centred aptitude for creating meaning carries a two-fold significance for educators: it is theoretically useful for understanding the learning process in the context of a fundamental or universal interdependency, and of practical value inasmuch as it focuses on the importance of learning to think and act in the here and now. (shrink)
I claim that our desire to be special motivates us to suppose that if we were not God created, we must be self-created. I also claim that Stephen J Gould's claims about punctuated equilibrium, the absence of directional selection, and exaptations, when taken together, lead to kind of secular creationism. I introduce the notion of “adaptive effects” and argue that a focus on the actual physiological and psychological mechanisms that produce adaptations provides a way out of the exaptation dilemma.
In this study I am going to present and discuss some of the central themes of Gustav Bergmann's theory of perception. I shall be concerned, however, only with "later Bergmann," that is, with the perceptual theory worked out in a series of essays in which Bergmann shifts from phenomenalism to a form of intentional realism. This label ("intentional realism") indicates the two dominant themes in Bergmann's later thought about perception: perceivings are analyzed as mental acts (thoughts) which are intentionally related (...) to real and mind-independent objects and states of affairs. In a timely essay, " Intentionality" (1955) Bergmann presented an impressive defense of mental acts, and although the framework of that essay was still phenomenalistic, the structural analysis of mental acts and their intentionality presented there has not been significantly altered by Bergmann in later writings. In two subsequent essays, "Acts" (1960) and "Realistic Postscript" (1963) his realistic turn was worked out in detail in the context of giving a satisfactory account of ordinary perceptual experience. These three essays will comprise the core texts of the study that follows. (shrink)
This paper develops and defends an internalist account of having authority for one’s claim. It begins with Robert Brandom’s pragmatist account of thinking which locates the root notion of reasoning in a primitive language game of asking for and giving reasons. The idea is that the authority of a claim can be spelled out pragmatically in terms of the social practice of undertaking commitments and attributing entitlements. It is argued that this account fails to acknowledge the role of the subject’s (...) grasp of the higher-order concept of the evidence on which I base my claim. (shrink)
Patients with schizophrenia have an impairment in the inhibition of reflexive saccades, as a consequence of a functional impairment of the prefrontal cortex, which has not yet been encapsulated in terms of a formal model. A number of novel and testable hypotheses can be generated from the framework proposed by Findlay & Walker that will stimulate further research. Their framework therefore marks an important step in the development of a comprehensive functional model of saccadic eye movements. Further advances will be (...) assisted by (1) a recognition of important distinctions in the executive control of volitional saccades and (2) addressing the capacity for cross-model integration of spatial information in the generation of the spatial properties of saccadic eye movements. (shrink)
When someone believes something that is justified for her, what part does the subject play in her state of being justified? I will answer this question by developing a strong internalist account of justification according to which the justification of a believing for a subject consists in her having grounds for her belief, and holding the belief in recognition of those grounds. But the internalist theory I defend incorporates key elements of reliabilism into its account. Using perception as a model (...) for justification, I show how ordinary perceivers would appeal to external factors to support their perceptual beliefs, and normally suppose that their beliefs are reliably connected to the objects their beliefs are about. I find in this feature of our common justificatory practice a sufficient basis for positing an externalist condition on justification—namely that subjects are only justified if their beliefs are reliably connected to their objects. (shrink)
A brief case for the useful arts -- The separation of thinking from doing -- To be master of one's own stuff -- The education of a gearhead: from amateur to professional -- The contradictions of the cubicle -- Thinking as doing -- Work, leisure, and full engagement.
The identity theory’s rise to prominence in analytic philosophy of mind during the late 1950s and early 1960s is widely seen as a watershed in the development of physicalism, in the sense that whereas logical behaviourism proposed analytic and a priori ascertainable identities between the meanings of mental and physical-behavioural concepts, the identity theory proposed synthetic and a posteriori knowable identities between mental and physical properties. While this watershed does exist, the standard account of it is misleading, as it is (...) founded in erroneous intensional misreadings of the logical positivists’—especially Carnap’s—extensional notions of translation and meaning, as well as misinterpretations of the positivists’ shift from the strong thesis of translation-physicalism to the weaker and more liberal notion of reduction-physicalism that occurred in the Unity of Science programme. After setting the historical record straight, the essay traces the first truly modern identity theory to Schlick’s pre-positivist views circa 1920 and goes on to explore its further development in Feigl, arguing that the fundamental difference between the Schlick-Feigl identity theory and the more familiar and influential Place-Smart-Armstrong identity theory has resurfaced in the deep and seemingly unbridgeable gulf in contemporary philosophy of consciousness between inflationary mentalism and deflationary physicalism. (shrink)
Following Schelling (1960), coordination problems have mainly been considered in a context where agents can achieve a common goal (e.g., rendezvous) only by taking common actions. Dynamic versions of this problem have been studied by Crawford and Haller (1990), Ponssard (1994), and Kramarz (1996). This paper considers an alternative dynamic formulation in which the common goal (dispersion) can only be achieved by agents taking distinct actions. The goal of spatial dispersion has been studied in static models of habitat selection, (...) location or congestion games, and network analysis. Our results show how this goal can be achieved gradually, by indistinguishable non-communicating agents, in a dynamic setting. (shrink)
This paper attacks an account of Kant's controversial distinction between "free" and "dependent" beauty. I present three problems—The Lorland problem, The Crawford Problem, and the problem of intrinsic relation—that are shown to be a consequence of various interpretations of Kant's distinction. Next, I reconstruct Robert Wicks' well-known account of dependent beauty as "the appreciation of teleological style" and point out a key equivocation in the statement of Wicks' account: the judgment of dependent beauty can be thought to consist in (...) comparing any two objects' teleological styles either in respect of how or in respect of how well each realizes a common purpose. I argue that this equivocation forces Wicks into a dilemma: either he must assert the impossibility of ugliness or he must assert that the judgment of dependent beauty is reducible to the judgment of perfection. Either way, he denies important theoretic desiderata. (shrink)
Most contemporary metaphysicians are sceptical about the reality of familiar objects such as dogs and trees, people and desks, cells and stars. They prefer an ontology of the spatially tiny or temporally tiny. Tiny microparticles 'dog-wise arranged' explain the appearance, they say, that there are dogs; microparticles obeying microphysics collectively cause anything that a baseball appears to cause; temporal stages collectively sustain the illusion of enduring objects that persist across changes. Crawford L. Elder argues that all such attempts to (...) 'explain away' familiar objects project downwards, onto the tiny entities, structures and features of familiar objects themselves. He contends that sceptical metaphysicians are thus employing shadows of familiar objects, while denying that the entities which cast those shadows really exist. He argues that the shadows are indeed really there, because their sources - familiar objects - are mind-independently real. (shrink)
Ever since the publication of Mansfield Park readers and critics have debated how to understand the novel and particularly its heroine Fanny Price. Some have disliked Fanny, have thought of her as prudish and priggish, and perhaps have preferred Mary Crawford and wished for a different ending to the story. Others have defended Fanny’s virtue, her judgment, and her mind, regarding them as quite superior to the virtue, judgment, and minds of all of the other women in the novel, (...) and all the men too, excepting (perhaps) Edmund. The debate, quite clearly, is about what Jane Austen was up to in a novel with a heroine so different from those in her other novels. The question is unclear in part because the narrator’s voice in Mansfield Park is so much like Mary Crawford’s voice. In her article “Searching for Jane Austen in Mary Crawford,” Emily Auerbach offers us quotations from Mary Crawford and from Jane Austen’s own letters and challenges us to figure out which are which—and it is very difficult. Mary Crawford, like Jane Austen, is frequently sparkling and edgy while Fanny is not, yet Fanny is the star. (shrink)
Politically, as well as philosophically, concerns with human rights have permeated many of the most important debates on social justice worldwide for fully a half-century. Henry Shue's 1980 book on Basic Rights proved to be a pioneering contribution to those debates, and one that continues to elicit both critical and constructive comment. Global Basic Rights brings together many of the most influential contemporary writers in political philosophy and international relations - Charles Beitz, Robert Goodin, Christian Reus-Smit, Andrew Hurrell, Judith Lichtenberg, (...) Elizabeth Ashford, Thomas Pogge, Neta Crawford, Richard Miller, David Luban, Jeremy Waldron and Simon Caney- to explore some of the most challenging theoretical and practical questions that Shue's work provokes. These range from the question of the responsibilities of the global rich to redress severe poverty to the permissibility of using torture to gain information to fight international terrorism. The contributors explore the continuing value of the idea of "basic rights" in understanding moral challenges as diverse as child labor and global climate change. (shrink)
The study reported here examines, in the context of Crawford's (1970) items, differences in research ethics attitudes among marketing professionals in Australia, Canada, Great Britian, and the United States. The study results indicate the lack of significant differences in research ethics attitudes among marketing professionals in the four countries. This finding is interpretable as implying the generalizability of the results of previous research ethics studies involving domestic (United States) marketing professionals as respondents.
Crawford Elder’s Real Natures and Familiar Objects promises to give naturalistically inclined metaphysicians reason to accept an ontology that includes many common sense objects, including persons, organisms, and at least many artifacts, behaviors, customs, and so on. This is a brave book, running against the current of trends towards austerity in ontology, tackling centuries old problems about how modal facts may be empirically discovered, and defending a commonsense ontology from a strictly naturalistic approach rather than via traditional appeals to (...) ordinary language or common sense. (shrink)
To fit the magnificence of this setting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, and the honor of giving the 2007 Sir John Crawford Memorial Lecture, it is well to have a subject of suitable proportions. I have chosen one of global size and urgent time frame: our climate crisis. We only have one future and one global climate–and now it looks as if we only have one chance to rescue our civilization from collapse and prevent a mass extinction (...) of species during the 21st century. Unless you have been keeping up with climate science for the past twenty-five years, you likely do not know how serious the matter has become. The notion that we might slowly get into serious trouble by mid-century has been conveyed by the media and understood by at least some political leaders. But that scenario depends on somehow avoiding sudden shifts in climate in the meantime, instant setbacks at a time when we lack maneuvering room. An abrupt shift in drought area occurred in 1983 and we had a near-miss of a mass extinction of Amazon species in 1999. It is easy to appreciate that one more degree of global warming will seriously reduce crop yields in the tropics, but in the words of climate scientist Claudia Tebaldi 1, “It’s the extremes, not the averages, that cause the most damage to.. (shrink)
An important finding of the game theoretic research on signaling games is the insight that under many circumstances, a signal obtains credibility by incurring costs to the sender. Therefore it seems questionable whether or not cheap talk—signals that are not payoff relevant—can serve to transmit information among rational agents. This issue is non-trivial in strategic interactions where the preferences of the players are not aligned. Researchers like Crawford & Sobel, Rabin, and Farrell demonstrated, however, that even in the case (...) of partially divergent interests, cheap talk may be informative. They assume that signals have an exogenously given meaning that is common knowledge between the players, and they explore the conditions under which such a signal is credible. This discussion has obvious relevance to the program of Gricean pragmatics in linguistics. According to Grice’s "Cooperative Principle”, this research tradition only considers scenarios where the interests of the players are aligned. Nevertheless, the assumption of differential signaling costs introduces an element of non-aligned interests. The present paper proposes a framework that combines these two research strands. Using an inference protocol of iterated best response, it gives a recipe for how the interlocutors derive rationalizable strategies from exogeneously given "literal” meanings of signals. No special assumptions about the alignment of interests or signaling costs are made. After introducing the formal model, the paper sketches several applications of this model to problems in linguistic pragmatics, like scalar implicatures, the division of pragmatic labor, and the interpretation of measure terms. (shrink)
The dramatic declaration by U.S. President George W. Bush that, in light of the attacks on 9/11, the United States would henceforth be engaging in "preemption" against such enemies as terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction forced a wide-open debate about justifiable uses of military force. Opponents saw the declaration as a direct challenge to the consensus, which has formed since the ratification of the Charter of the United Nations, that armed force may be used only in defense. Supporters (...) responded that in an age of terrorism defense could only mean "preemption." This volume of all-new chapters provides the historical, legal, political, and philosophical perspective necessary to intelligent participation in the on-going debate, which is likely to last long beyond the war in Iraq. Thorough defenses and critiques of the Bush doctrine are provided by the most authoritative writers on the subject from both sides of the Atlantic. Is a nation ever justified in attacking before it has been attacked? If so, under precisely what conditions? Does the possibility of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction force us to change our traditional views about what counts as defense? This book provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of the justifiability of preemptive or preventive military action. Its engaging debate, accompanied by an analytic Introduction, focuses probing criticism against the most persuasive proponents of preemptive attack or preventive war, who then respond to these challenges and modify or extend their justifications. Authors of recent pivotal analyses, including historian Marc Trachtenberg, international relations professor Neta Crawford, law professor David Luban, and political philosopher Allen Buchanan, are confronted by other authoritative writers on the nature and justification of war more broadly, including historian Hew Strachan, international normative theorist Henry Shue, and philosophers David Rodin, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Suzanne Uniacke. The resulting lively and many-sided exchanges shed historical, legal, political, and philosophical light on a key policy question of our time. Going beyond the simple dichotomies of popular discussion the authors reflect on the nature of all warfare, the arguments for and against it, and the possibilities for the moral to constrain the military and the political in the face of grave threat. -/- This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. (shrink)
Many people argue that history makes a special difference to the subjects of biology and psychology, and that history does not make this special difference to other parts of the world. This paper will show that historical properties make no more or less of a difference to biology or psychology than to chemistry, physics, or other sciences. Although historical properties indeed make a certain kind of difference to biology and psychology, this paper will show that historical properties make the same (...) kind of difference to geology, sociology, astronomy, and other sciences. Similarly, many people argue that nonhistorical properties make a special difference to the nonbiological and the nonpsychological world. This paper will show that nonhistorical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their causal behavior and that historical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their distributions. Although history is special, it is special in the same way to all parts of the world. (shrink)
This paper opposes universal mereological composition (UMC). Sider defends it: unless UMC were true, he says, it could be indeterminate how many objects there are in the world. I argue that there is no general connection between how widely composition occurs and how many objects there are in the world. Sider fails to support UMC. I further argue that we should disbelieve in UMC objects. Existing objections against them say that they are radically unlike Aristotelian substances. True, but there is (...) a stronger objection. This is that they are characterized by no properties, and so fail to be like anything – even themselves. (shrink)
James decides that the best price today on pork chops is at Supermarket S, then James makes driving motions for twenty minutes, then James’ car enters the parking lot at Supermarket S. Common sense supposes that the stages in this sequence may be causally connected, and that the pattern is commonplace: James’ belief (together with his desire for pork chops) causes bodily behavior, and the behavior causes a change in James’ whereabouts. Anyone committed to the idea that beliefs and desires (...) are states installed by evolution must, it seems, think something similar. For how can one see beliefs and desires as conferring selective advantage if not by supposing that, by causing bodily behavior in their subjects, they brought about changes in their subjects’ surroundings? Yet many, many philosophers currently think or worry that mental causation is illusory (see, e.g., Heil and Mele 1993, or Macdonald and Macdonald 1995). Any physical changes which a mental state appears to cause can be viewed as a complex event involving microparticles, and for any such complex event, many philosophers suppose, there will have been previous microphysical occurrences sufficient to cause it. Barring routine overdetermination of such complex events, the apparent causation of mental events seems to be excluded. Nor does it help to say that some salient segment of the previous microphysical event just is the mental event, differently described (Davidson 1970). For describing the previous events as microphysical seems to spotlight the very features in virtue of which they did their causal work; the mental features seem epiphenomenal (Yablo 1992b: pp. 425-36; Yablo 1992a). This paper argues that the complex physical events, which mental events seem excluded from causing, are not caused at all. For they are either accidents, in something like Aristotle’s sense (Sorabji 1980: pp. 3-25), or coincidences, in a sense which David Owens has recently sharpened (Owens 1992). (shrink)
Here is a view at least much like Lewis’s “Humean supervenience,” and in any case highly influential—in that some endorse it, and many more worry that it is true. All truths about the world are fixed by the pattern of instantiation, by individual points in space-time, of the “perfectly natural properties” posited by end-of-inquiry physics. In part, this view denies independent variability: the world could not have been different from how it actually is, in the ways depicted by common sense (...) and the special sciences, without differing in the punctiform instantiation of fundamental physical properties. In part, it makes an ontological claim: what it is for one of the objects recognized by common sense or special sciences to be there in the world, bearing the properties attributed by a true description, is “nothing over and above” the obtaining of fundamental physical properties at points, and fundamental physical relations among points. I argue that this view is untenable. I concede that for every true claim in familiar discourses, there is a state of affairs at the level of fundamental microphysics that is the truth-maker—some state of affairs sufficient for truth in the familiar claim. The problem is that the view needs to posit not just truth-makers at the level of microphysics, but truth-conditions—states of affairs the obtaining of which is required for truth in any familiar claim, and the failure of which renders the familiar claim false. That is, the view must posit necessary conditions, at the level of microparticles, for truth in familiar claims. This it cannot plausibly do. (shrink)
It is widely supposed that, in Hilary Putnam’s phrase, there are no “ready-made objects” (Putnam 1982; cf. Putnam 1981, Ch. 3). Instead the objects we consider real are partly of our own making: we carve them out of the world (or out of experience). The usual reason for supposing this lies in the claim that there are available to us alternative ways of “dividing reality” into objects (to quote the title of Hirsch 1993), ways which would afford us every bit (...) as much practical and cognitive mastery as we now possess. Hence there is no warrant for supposing that the objects recognized by such alternative schemes are any less real than the objects we actually consider real—unless we are to appeal to a “God’s-eye perspective”, which virtually no one wants to do. The reasonable conclusion, many philosophers suppose, is that any system of objects exists only relative to a particular conceptual scheme or system of predicates. Our system of objects is, in this sense, partly of our own making. But this claim should not be heard as a reaffirmation of the idealism of Fichte or Husserl. It is more accurate to take it merely as a claim about sameness and difference among the objects of the world. It is the claim that sameness and difference, whether at the level of kinds or of individual objects, do not obtain mind-independently, but only relative to a conceptual scheme or predicate system (see, e.g., Putnam 1981, pp. 53-54). That is, whether two objects are of the same kind, and whether one and the same individual object now exists at such-and-such.. (shrink)
When a tree is chopped to bits, or a sweater unravelled, its matter still exists. Since antiquity, it has sometimes been inferred that nothing really has been destroyed: what has happened is just that this matter has assumed new form. Contemporary versions hold that apparent destruction of a familiar object is just rearrangement of microparticles or of 'physical simples' or 'world stuff'. But if destruction of a familiar object is genuinely to be reduced to mere alteration of something else, we (...) must identify an alteration proper to the career, the course of existence, of this something else; relatedly, the alteration must be characterizable without asserting the existence of the familiar object. All contemporary views fail one of these requirements. (shrink)
In ‘Of Sensory Systems and the “Aboutness” of Mental States’, Kathleen Akins (1996) argues against what she calls ‘the traditional view’ about sensory systems, according to which they are detectors of features in the environment outside the organism. As an antidote, she considers the case of thermoreception, a system whose sensors send signals about how things stand with themselves and their immediate dermal surround (a ‘narcissistic’ sensory system); and she closes by suggesting that the signals from many sensory systems may (...) not in any familiar sense be about anything at all. Her presentation of the issues, however, overlooks resources available to ‘the traditional view’—or so I shall argue. Akins’s own thumbnail sketch of what is wrong with the traditional view is that it asks, concerning a given sensory system, ‘what is it detecting?’, when we should instead be asking ‘what is it doing?’ (352). Her point is that on the traditional view the function of a sensory system—what it's ‘for’—is to detect or indicate (values of) features of the outside environment. But at least on one version of the traditional view—namely Ruth Millikan’s—this would never be the sole or main proper function of a sensory system. (Akins does not list Millikan as a traditionalist, but Millikan fits squarely Akins’s description of them, since she believes in a naturalistic theory of aboutness and thinks it should begin with the senses.) For Millikan (1989, 1993), the proper function of a sensory system is in the first instance enabling behavioural systems—in the simplest case, motor routines—to perform their proper function. This they do, roughly, by switching on and steering the behavioural routines. Where features of the outside environment come in is as Normal (= assumed-by-the-design) conditions for the successful performance of the sensory system's proper function. That is, the only strategy for switching on and steering that is simple enough for evolution to have hit upon it, and reliable enough for evolution to have liked it, is a strategy which gears the steering to (values of) features of the outside environment. But as soon as one starts fleshing out the details of this story, one notices that they are probably quite different in the case of thermoreception from how they are with ‘distance’ senses such as vision and olfaction--a point which Akins overlooks.. (shrink)
Common sense believes in objects which, if real, routinely lose component parts or particles. Statues get chipped, people undergo haircuts and amputations, and ships have planks replaced. Sometimes philosophers argue that in addition to these objects, there are others which could not possibly lose any of their parts or particles, nor have new ones added to them--objects which could not possibly have been bigger or smaller, at any time, than how they actually were.1 (Sometimes the restriction on size is argued (...) independently of the restriction on switches of parts.2) If these other objects are real at all, they are alarmingly abundant. Exactly where the statue sits, there sits a parcel or piece of clay which would cease to be itself, and hence cease to exist, were even so small a part as the statue's nose removed.3 In exactly the place where the recently reconditioned ship is found, there is a mass of wood which never contained, and never could contain, any particles of wood--or bits of wood-stuff--other than those it now has.4 Moreover, since masses of matter (or "aggregates") can continue to exist even if divided into separate parts, while parcels cannot, the abundance is two-fold: where every parcel is found, there is also a mass.5 But how can there be room for all these additional objects if, at any time, two different objects cannot occupy exactly the same place? Or, worse, if even some of these additional objects are real, how can room remain for familiar objects? Recent treatments of this ancient puzzle have urged that we retain both "the principle of one object to a place" and the other ontological assumptions which make that principle seem to force a choice between affirming the reality of familiar objects, and that of the strangely brittle intruders.6 But all the recent treatments have left standing the reality of at least some of these brittle objects.7 By doing so they have passed up what is, perhaps, the simplest and safest response to the ancient puzzle.. (shrink)
This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of 'altruism' projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at (...) odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the 'deserving poor'. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of 'altruism'. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause. (shrink)
Historically, opponents of realism have managed to slip beneath a key objection which realists raise against them. The opponents say that some element of the world is constructed by our cognitive practices; realists retort that the element would have existed unaltered, had our practices differed; the opponents sometimes agree, contending that we construct in just such a way as to render the counterfactual true. The contemporary instalment of this debate starts with conventionalism about modality, which holds that the borders of (...) the world's kinds and the careers of individuals in those kinds obtain only relative to our conventions of individuation. Realists object that the kinds and careers in nature would still have obtained, had our conventions been different, but conventionalists claim to be able to agree. I argue that this claim is false, and that conventionalism contradicts itself. (shrink)
We are confident of many of the judgements we make as to what sorts of alterations the members of nature's kinds can survive, and what sorts of events mark the ends of their existences. But is our confidence based on empirical observation of nature's kinds and their members? Conventionalists deny that we can learn empirically which properties are essential to the members of nature's kinds. Judgements of sameness in kind between members, and of numerical sameness of a member across time, (...) merely project our conventions of individuation. Our confidence is warranted because apart from those conventions there are no phenomena of kind-sameness or of numerical sameness across time. There is just 'stuff' displaying properties. This paper argues that conventionalists can assign no properties to the 'stuff' beyond immediate phenomenal properties. Consequently they cannot explain how each of us comes to be able to wield 'our conventions'. (shrink)
A mutation alters the hemoglobin in some members of a species of antelope, and as a result the members fare better at high altitudes than their conspecifics do; so high-altitude foraging areas become open to them that are closed to their conspecifics; they thrive, reproduce at a greater rate, and the gene for altered hemoglobin spreads further through the gene pool of the species. That sounds like a classic example (owed to Karen Neander, 1995) of a causal chain traced by (...) evolutionary biology. But a view now nearly universal among philosophers maintains that such biological causation is always shadowed, perhaps even rivaled, by causation on a different level.1 That the subgroup of antelopes forages in areas closed to the conspecifics is a state of affairs embodied or realized, notes this view, in certain movements and state changes done by certain physical microparticles—untold billions of microparticles and movements, but a finite and determinate (more on this below) collection nevertheless. That the subgroup reproduces at a greater rate is likewise realized by a huge collection of microparticle movements, a different collection. And the microparticle happenings comprised in the first collection are causally responsible, strictly in accordance with the laws of microphysics, for the microparticle happenings in the second. Biological causation is always shadowed, perhaps even rivaled, by causation on the level of microphysics. The view I mean is general: any case of causing uncovered by any of the special sciences can be recaptured at the level of microphysics. This view is I think what most philosophers mean by “physicalism”; in any case, “physicalism” is the label I shall use. Physicalism comes in two forms. Modest physicalism holds that any causal transaction reported by the special sciences can be retraced by microphysics.2 Hegemonic physicalism holds that retracing such a transaction at the level of.. (shrink)
To be a realist about modality, need one claim that more exists than just the various objects and properties that populate the world—e.g. worlds other than the actual one, or maximal consistent sets of propositions? Or does the existence of objects and properties by itself involve the obtaining of necessities (and possibilities) in re? The latter position is now unpopular but not unfamiliar. Aristotle held that objects have essences, and hence necessarily have certain properties. Recently it has been argued that (...) the identity of any property is tied to the natural laws in which it figures, which entails that the occurrence of properties involves the obtaining of nomological necessities ([24], pp. 206-33 and 234-60; [23]; cf. [25] and [6]). Somewhat less recently, Wittgenstein ([28], p. 168) worried that the reality of at least some properties—precise shades of colors being a prime example—involved the obtaining in re of certain impossibilities. This paper argues that Wittgenstein’s worries were right, and not just concerning some properties, but all properties whatever. That there are objects and properties in the world at all, then, amounts to there obtaining modal states of affairs. This argument supplements, rather than replaces, the others. The position on property incompatibility advanced here actually helps defend Aristotelian essentialism against epistemological objections, or so I have argued ([15]). And while this paper’s position on property incompatibility diverges from the idea that a property’s nomic profile is essential to it—more on this in the next section—it is at least compatible with the thought that the necessity involved in the laws of nature enters into ontology at the ground level. (shrink)
Historically, opponents of realism have argued that the world’s objects are constructed by our cognitive activities—or, less colorfully, that they exist and are as they are only relative to our ways of thinking and speaking. To this realists have stoutly replied that even if we had thought or spoken in ways different from our actual ones, the world would still have been populated by the same objects as it actually is, or at least by most of them. (Our thinking differently (...) could cause some differences in which objects exist, or in what some existing objects are like, but that is another matter.) Yet this reply has repeatedly failed to amount to a decisive objection. For opponents of realism have repeatedly argued, in one way or another, that we construct the world’s objects in just such a way as to render such a counterfactual true. We construct them so as to appear not to be our constructs. Just such a debate is currently underway concerning the properties that are essential to the world’s objects. It is widely agreed, with varying caveats1, that there are such properties—that by virtue of belonging to one or another natural kind, the world’s objects possess certain properties essentially, and have individual careers that last exactly as long as those essential properties are jointly present. But what underlies the status as essential of the properties that are thus essential to objects in the world? The realist answer treats essential status as mind-independent, and assigns it to the way the world works (Elder.. (shrink)
An influential line of thought in metaphysics holds that where common sense discerns a tree or a dog or a baseball there may be just many microparticles. Provided the microparticles are arranged in the right way -- are “treewise” or “dogwise” or “baseballwise” arranged -- our sensory experiences will be just the same as if a tree or dog or baseball were really there. Therefore whether there really are suchfamiliar objects in the world can be decided only by determining what (...) more is needed for microparticles dogwise arranged actually to compose a dog. This paper argues that this line of thought sets up the wrong agenda. Composition is trivial; dogwise (etc.) arrangement is tricky. Dogwise arrangement will obtain in the wrong regions unless we stipulate that there are dogs, and that dogwise arrangementobtains only within their borders. The bearers of dogwise arrangement, moreover, will have to be dogs themselves, not their microparticles. Thus allowing that dogwise arrangement obtains at all is allowing that there are dogs. (shrink)
Empty judgements appear to be about something, and inaccurate judgements to report something. Naturalism tries to explain these appearances without positing non-real objects or states of affairs. Biological naturalism explains that the false and the empty are tokens which fail to perform the function proper to their biological type. But if truth is a biological 'supposed to', we should expect designs that achieve it only often enough. The sensory stimuli which trigger the frog's gulp-launching signal may be a poor guide (...) to the signal's content. Teleosemantics should be anti-verificationist. (shrink)
This paper argues that typical biological species are natural kinds, on a familiar realist understanding of natural kinds—classes of individuals across which certain properties cluster together, in virtue of the causal workings of the world. But the clustering is far from exceptionless. Virtually no properties, or property-combinations, characterize every last member of a typical species—unless they can also appear outside the species. This motivates some to hold that what ties together the members of a species is the ability to interbreed, (...) others that it is common descent. Yet others hold that species are scattered individuals,of which organisms are parts rather than members. But not one of these views absolves us of the need to posit a typical phenotypic profile. Vagueness is here to stay. Some seek to explain the vagueness by saying species are united by “homeostatic property clusters”; but this view collapses into the more familiar realist picture. (shrink)
Are judgements and wishes reallybrain events (or brain states) which will be affirmedby a completed scientific account of how humanbehavior is caused? Materialists, other thaneliminativists, say Yes. But brain events do notcause muscle contractions, hence bodily movements,directly. They do so, if at all, by triggeringintermediate causes, viz. firings in motor nerves. Soit is crucial, this paper argues, whether they arecharacterized as biological events –performances of naturally-selected-for operations – orinstead as complex microphysical events. ``Acauses B, B causes C, so A causes (...) C'' is defensible forbiological brain events, but fails for microphysical ones. (shrink)
A mutation alters the hemoglobin in some members of a species of antelope, and as a result the members fare better at high altitudes than their conspecifics do; so high-altitude foraging areas become open to them that are closed to their conspecifics; they thrive, reproduce at a greater rate, and the gene for altered hemoglobin spreads further through the gene pool of the species. That sounds like a classic example (owed to Karen Neander, 1995) of a causal chain traced by (...) evolutionary biology. But a view now nearly universal among philosophers maintains that such biological causation is always shadowed, perhaps even rivaled, by causation on a different level.1 That the subgroup of antelopes forages in areas closed to the conspecifics is a state of affairs embodied or realized, notes this view, in certain movements and state changes done by certain physical microparticles—untold billions of microparticles and movements, but a finite and determinate (more on this below) collection nevertheless. That the subgroup reproduces at a greater rate is likewise realized by a huge collection of microparticle movements, a different collection. And the microparticle happenings comprised in the first collection are causally responsible, strictly in accordance with the laws of microphysics, for the microparticle happenings in the second. Biological causation is always shadowed, perhaps even rivaled, by causation on the level of microphysics. The view I mean is general: any case of causing uncovered by any of the special sciences can be recaptured at the level of microphysics. This view is I think what most philosophers mean by “physicalism”; in any case, “physicalism” is the label I shall use. Physicalism comes in two forms. Modest physicalism holds that any causal transaction reported by the special sciences can be retraced by microphysics.2 Hegemonic physicalism holds that retracing such a transaction at the level of.. (shrink)
Modal conventionalism is the view that two crucial forms of sameness are mind-dependent. There is no phenomenon of sameness in kind, on this view, except in virtue of our conventions for individuating nature’s kinds; there is no phenomenon of numerical sameness across time, for an individual member of some natural kind, except in virtue of our conventions for individuating such members.1 Modal conventionalism has its realist opponents. These opponents have argued, following Kripke’s lead more than thirty years ago (Kripke 1972), (...) that the boundaries of at least many of nature’s kinds are carved out by nature itself, and not by our classifi catory practices (e.g., Millikan 2000: passim, e.g., pp. 25 and 72). But they have not generally argued, with anything approaching the same vigor, that modal conventionalism is wrong in its other main claim. They have not in general argued that the world-given connections among properties, that make those properties mind-independently be membership conditions for some natural kind, at the same time make those properties mind-independently be persistence conditions for the members of the kind—properties the departure of which constitutes a ceasing-to-exist for the object that formerly had them. On the contrary, opponents of modal conventionalism have.. (shrink)
This paper explores the nature of virtue theory as applied to engineering practice. It links virtue to specific areas of practice such as the selection of ends, devotion to service, the formation of justified belief, the conduct of dialogue, the taking of actions, and exercises of the will. These areas are related to a culture of virtue in which an engineering society creates the conditions enabling acts of virtue and celebrates individuals and their acts which exemplify identified virtues. The result (...) is a basis for engineering ethics which draws attention to the impetus for an ethically sound life. (shrink)
