We propose category theory, the mathematical theory of structure, as a vehicle for defining ontologies in an unambiguous language with analytical and constructive features. Specifically, we apply categorical logic and model theory, based upon viewing an ontology as a sub-category of a category of theories expressed in a formal logic. In addition to providing mathematical rigor, this approach has several advantages. It allows the incremental analysis of ontologies by basing them in an interconnected hierarchy of theories, with an operation on (...) the hierarchy that expresses the formation of complex theories from simple theories that express first principles. Another operation forms abstractions expressing the shared concepts in an array of theories. The use of categorical model theory makes possible the incremental analysis of possible worlds, or instances, for the theories, and the mapping of instances of a theory to instances of its more abstract parts. We describe the theoretical approach by applying it to the semantics of neural networks. (shrink)

This thesis examines how association football evolved in Liverpool in the period before the Great War, and how the sport impacted on the lives of Liverpudlians during this period. Specific consideration is given in the first two chapters to the introduction of football to Liverpool and its progressive commercialisation. The third chapter examines the backgrounds of the city's professional footballers and their relationship with supporters and clubs. The role in Liverpool of amateur, semi-professional, and schoolboy football is considered in the (...) fourth chapter. Identities form a common theme of the final chapters, which examine the local culture of football supporters and newspapers' relationship with the game. The study uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including some previously unconsidered evidence. It is argued that previous interpretations of the sport's introduction are misleading and that football actually originated as a Muscular Christian initiative by Cambridge educated clergy at the end of the 1870s. Despite this comparatively late introduction, political and business interests influenced football, and in Liverpool the sport underwent an intense process of commercialisation. Profit seems to have been a priority for the original Everton FC and its positive commercial prognosis led to the club's selection as a founder member of the Football League. The scale of importation of professional footballers by Everton and Liverpool football clubs was to the detriment of local talent, although the city's amateur game was thriving by the 1900s. Though football was immensely popular in Liverpool, the city's unusual social and economic demography meant that a significant proportion of its population were unable to attend professional matches, or to make a significant contribution to the amateur game. From the 1900s, attendances in Liverpool grew more slowly as major football clubs in other cities attracted more spectators. (shrink)

The chair of the ethics committee of a major medical center agonized over how he, as a physician, and his organization should deal with Initiative 119, which, if passed, would legalize physician involvement in active, voluntary euthanasia in Washington State. In the end, he said, he could not vote for aid-in-dying because, “However much I want to reduce suffering, I myself just couldn’t do it to one of my patients.” He spoke of a personal distaste for the potential act, of (...) a profound desire not to have to do it. It was not an ethical argument, but an honest and compelling expression of feelings.Why can’t this sincere man do it, even for patients who request such aid? In a 1991 poll, taken in Washington State prior to the vote on Initiative 119, 49 percent of the physicians surveyed supported the initiative, but 75 percent did not want to participate in aid-in-dying. (shrink)

The chair of the ethics committee of a major medical center agonized over how he, as a physician, and his organization should deal with Initiative 119, which, if passed, would legalize physician involvement in active, voluntary euthanasia in Washington State. In the end, he said, he could not vote for aid-in-dying because, “However much I want to reduce suffering, I myself just couldn’t do it to one of my patients.” He spoke of a personal distaste for the potential act, of (...) a profound desire not to have to do it. It was not an ethical argument, but an honest and compelling expression of feelings.Why can’t this sincere man do it, even for patients who request such aid? In a 1991 poll, taken in Washington State prior to the vote on Initiative 119, 49 percent of the physicians surveyed supported the initiative, but 75 percent did not want to participate in aid-in-dying. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ethical Issues in Drug Testing, Approval and Pricing: The Clot‐Dissolving Drugs. By Baruch Brody.

Book reviewed in this article: Ethical Issues in Drug Testing, Approval and Pricing: The Clot‐Dissolving Drugs. By Baruch Brody.

The standard formulation of Newcomb's problem compares evidential and causal conceptions of expected utility, with those maximizing evidential expected utility tending to end up far richer. Thus, in a world in which agents face Newcomb problems, the evidential decision theorist might ask the causal decision theorist: "if you're so smart, why ain’cha rich?” Ultimately, however, the expected riches of evidential decision theorists in Newcomb problems do not vindicate their theory, because their success does not generalize. Consider a theory that allows (...) the agents who employ it to end up rich in worlds containing Newcomb problems and continues to outperform in other cases. This type of theory, which I call a “success-first” decision theory, is motivated by the desire to draw a tighter connection between rationality and success, rather than to support any particular account of expected utility. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive justification of success-first decision theories as accounts of rational decision. I locate this justification in an experimental approach to decision theory supported by the aims of methodological naturalism. (shrink)

A school of thought traceable to the political writings of Bodin and Hobbes believes that "order" is the cardinal principle which takes precedence over "justice" - which is reduced to conformity. The main concern of this book is to analyse this tradition through study of its progenitors.

Thomas Hobbes is arguably the greatest of all English philosophers. In the second half of the twentieth century, he has been the subject of sustained critical attention. Hobbes was capable of powerful argument on virtually any level, whether logical, scriptural or historical. And he has attracted attention in all these areas and more questions of historical method, language and linguistics, metaphysics, ethics, law, politics, science and religion. Hobbes has been examined from a great variety of perspectives as an ethical (...) positivist and a deontologist, as a bourgeois advocate and a supporter of the aristocracy, as an absolutist and a proponent of parliamentary government, as a "conservative" and a "modern," as an atheist and a believer. The periodical literature on Hobbes is accordingly very rich, but it is also difficult to access. The four volumes of these critical assessments assemble an important array of material which will be invaluable to all students of Hobbes. (shrink)

Steve Fuller seeks to blame Kuhn for the present state of the philosophy of science. It has become ‘Kuhniferous’, he argues, both in structure and in content. I begin by taking issue with this judgement, suggesting that Kuhn wasn’t as influential as his realist and naturalist opponents. I then proceed to argue that Fuller fails to clinch one of his central charges, that Kuhn disconnected the philosophical defence of scientific progress from any substantive ends of science. Kuhn has a story (...) to tell here that should commend itself to Fuller’s ‘instrumentalist’ instincts. That Fuller doesn’t seem to recognise it, I suggest, is down to a certain sort of blindness to epistemological issues, a failure to appreciate that claims to epistemic progress on the part of science may be more than self-serving. (shrink)

When leading spectroscopists in Europe and America were engaged, during 1897, in exploring the recently-discovered Zeeman Effect, they were overtaken by a relatively obscure phsicist working in Dublin. Thomas Preston had previously been known only for his excellent textbooks. His achievement in discovering the Anomalous Zeeman Effect was immediately recognized, but his untimely death has deprived posterity until now of a full account of his life and qualities.

The sensory constraint on conscious thought says that if a thought is phenomenally conscious, its phenomenal properties must be reducible to some sensory phenomenal character. I argue that the burgeoning psychological literature on aphantasia, an impoverishment in the ability to generate mental imagery, provides a counterexample to the sensory constraint. The best explanation of aphantasics’ introspective reports, neuroimaging, and task performance is that some aphantasics have conscious thoughts without sensory mental imagery. This argument against the sensory constraint supports the existence (...) of a non-sensory phenomenology of thought. Moreover, this argument can be extended to show that this non-sensory phenomenology determines a thought content. Finally, it can potentially diagnose the disagreement over cognitive phenomenology in the philosophy of mind, as such disagreement may turn on interpersonal variation in mental imagery. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic future-bias), and that our preferences regarding non-hedonic events (both positive and negative) exhibit no such bias (non-hedonic time-neutrality). Further, it has been assumed that our third-person preferences are always time-neutral. Some have attempted to use these (presumed) differential patterns of future-bias—different across kinds of events and perspectives—to argue for the irrationality of hedonic future-bias. This (...) paper experimentally tests these descriptive hypotheses. While as predicted we found first-person hedonic future-bias, we did not find that participants were time-neutral in all other conditions. Hence, the presumed asymmetry of hedonic/non-hedonic and first/third-person preferences cannot be used to argue for the irrationality of future-bias, since no such asymmetries exist. Instead, we develop a more fine-grained approach, according to which three factors—positive/negative valence, first/third-person, and hedonic/non-hedonic—each independently influence, but do not determine, whether an event is treated in a future-biased or time-neutral way. We discuss the upshots of these results for the debate over the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

The phenomenal view of thought holds that thinking is an experience with phenomenal character that determines what the thought is about. This paper develops and responds to the objection that the phenomenal view is chauvinistic: it withholds thoughts from creatures that in fact have them. I develop four chauvinism objections to the phenomenal view—one from introspection, one from interpersonal differences, one from thought experiments, and one from the unconscious thought paradigm in psychology—and show that the phenomenal view can resist all (...) four. (shrink)

Philosophers working on time-biases assume that people are hedonically biased toward the future. A hedonically future-biased agent prefers pleasurable experiences to be future instead of past, and painful experiences to be past instead of future. Philosophers further predict that this bias is strong enough to apply to unequal payoffs: people often prefer less pleasurable future experiences to more pleasurable past ones, and more painful past experiences to less painful future ones. In addition, philosophers have predicted that future-bias is restricted to (...) first-person preferences, and that people’s third-person preferences are time-neutral. Philosophers disagree vigorously about the normative status of these preferences—i.e., they disagree about whether first-person future-bias is rationally permissible. Time-neutralists, for example, have appealed to the predicted asymmetry between first- and third-person preferences to argue for the rational impermissibility of future-bias. We empirically tested these predictions, and found that while people do prefer more past pain to less future pain, they do not prefer less future pleasure to more past pleasure. This was so in both first and third-person conditions. This suggests that future-bias is typically non-absolute, and is more easily outweighed in the case of positive events. We connect this result to the normative debate over future-bias. (shrink)

In recent years, a disagreement has erupted between two camps of philosophers about the rationality of bias toward the near and bias toward the future. According to the traditional hybrid view, near bias is rationally impermissible, while future bias is either rationally permissible or obligatory. Time neutralists, meanwhile, argue that the hybrid view is untenable. They claim that those who reject near bias should reject both biases and embrace time neutrality. To date, experimental work has focused on future-directed near bias. (...) The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate by investigating past-directed near bias. If people treat the past and future differently with respect to near bias, by being future-directed but not past-directed near biased, then this supports a particular version of the hybrid view: temporal metaphysic hybridism. If people treat the past and future the same with respect to near bias, then this supports a simple version of time neutralism, which explains both future bias and near bias in terms of the functioning of a single mechanism: the anticipatory/retrospectory mechanism. Our results undermine the claim that people are future-directed, but not past-directed, near biased, and hence do not support temporal metaphysic hybridism. They also fail to support simple time-neutralism; instead, they suggest that there are multiple mechanisms that differently shape future- and past-directed preferences. (shrink)

Most of us display a bias toward the near: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our near future and painful experiences to be in our distant future. We also display a bias toward the future: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our future and painful experiences to be in our past. While philosophers have tended to think that near bias is a rational defect, almost no one finds future bias objectionable. In this essay, we argue that this hybrid (...) position is untenable. We conclude that those who reject near bias should instead endorse complete temporal neutrality. (shrink)

The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphilosophical understanding of it. This is especially unsatisfactory since such (...) understanding is essential to finding an adequate remedy for the widely perceived ills of contemporary analytic philosophy. I suggest that a more fruitful approach to developing such understanding might begin with treating the unity of analytic philosophy as illusory. (shrink)

Thomas Reid saw the three subjects of logic, rhetoric, and the fine arts as closely cohering aspects of one endeavor that he called the culture of the mind. This was a topic on which Reid lectured for many years in Glasgow, and this volume presents as near a reconstruction of these lectures as is now possible. Though virtually unknown today, this material in fact relates closely to Reid's published works and in particular to the late Essays on the Intellectual (...) Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man. When composing these works, Reid drew primarily on his lectures on "pneumatology," which presented a theory of the mental powers, broadly conceived. These lectures were basic to the course on the culture of the mind that explained the cultivation of the mental powers. Although the Essays also included some elements from the material on the culture of the mind, the bulk of the latter was left in manuscript form, and Alexander Broadie's edition restores this important extension of Reid's overall work. In addition, this volume continues the attractive combination of manuscript material and published work, in this case Reid's important and well-known essay on Aristotle's logic. This text was corrupted in earlier editions of Reid's works and is now restored to the state in which Reid left it. This volume underscores Reid's great and growing significance, viewed both as a historical figure and as a philosopher. At the same time, it is of great interdisciplinary importance. While the material emerges directly from the core of Reid's philosophy, as now understood, it will appeal widely to people in literary, cultural, historical, and communications studies. In this regard, the present volume is a true fruit of the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer pleasures to be in the future and pains to be in the past. Empirical research shows that negative future-bias is robust: people prefer more past pain to less future pain. Is positive future-bias robust or fragile? Do people only prefer pleasures to be located in the future, compared to the past, when those pleasures are of equal value, or do they continue to prefer that pleasures be located in the future even when past pleasures outweigh future (...) ones? Some arguments against the rationality of future-bias require positive future-bias to be robust, while others require it to be fragile. We empirically investigate and show that positive future-bias is robust. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers debating the rationality of time-biases have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent empirical work, however, suggests that our preferences are more nuanced. First, there is evidence that our third-person preferences exhibit time-neutrality only when the individual with respect to whom we have preferences—the preference target—is a random stranger about whom we know nothing; given access to some information about the preference target, third-person (...) preferences mirror first-person preferences. As a result, the simulation hypothesis has been proposed, according to which third-person preferences will mirror first-person preferences when we can simulate the mental states of the preference target. Second, there is evidence that we prefer negative hedonic events to be in our past (we are first-person negatively hedonically future-biased) only when we view future events as fixed and in no way under our control. By contrast, when we perceive it to be within our power to mitigate the badness of future events, we are first-person negatively hedonically past-biased. This is the mitigation hypothesis. We distinguish two versions of the mitigation hypothesis, the squirrelling version and the heuristic version. We ran a study which tested the simulation hypothesis, and which aimed to determine whether the squirrelling or the heuristic version of the mitigation hypothesis enjoys more empirical support. We found support for the heuristic version of the hypothesis, but no support for the squirrelling version. (shrink)

Bayne and McClelland (2016) raise the matching content challenge for proponents of cognitive phenomenology: if the phenomenal character of thought is determined by its intentional content, why is it that my conscious thought that there is a blue wall before me and my visual perception of a blue wall before me don’t share any phenomenology, despite their matching content? In this paper, I first show that the matching content challenge is not limited to proponents of cognitive phenomenology but extends to (...) cases of cross-modal perception, threatening representationalism about consciousness in general. I then give two responses to the challenge, both of which appeal to intentional modes. The difference in intentional mode between a thought and a visual perception can either explain why we should not expect any phenomenal overlap between the two experiences, or it can make it clear why the phenomenal overlap is easy to overlook. I show that these responses are available to the representationalist about perceptual consciousness, as well as the proponent of cognitive phenomenology. The upshot is that, when it comes to the matching content challenge, both perceptual representationalism and cognitive representationalism stand on equal dialectical footing. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that at least some moral properties can be part of the contents of experience. I argue for this claim using a _contrast argument_, a type of argument commonly found in the literature on the philosophy of perception. I first appeal to psychological research on what I call emotionally empathetic dysfunctional individuals to establish a phenomenal contrast between EEDI s and normal individuals in some moral situations. I then argue that the best explanation for this contrast, assuming (...) non-skeptical moral realism, is that _badness_ is represented in the normal individual’s experience but not in the EEDI ’s experience. I consider and reject four alternative explanations of the contrast. (shrink)

Salient stimuli presented at unattended locations are not always perceived, a phenomenon termed inattentional blindness. We hypothesized that inattentional blindness may be mediated by attentional inhibition. It has been shown that attentional inhibition effects are maximal near an attended location. If our hypothesis is correct, inattentional blindness effects should similarly be maximal near an attended location. During central fixation, participants viewed rapidly presented colored digits at a peripheral location. An unexpected black circle was concurrently presented. Participants were instructed to maintain (...) central fixation and name each color/digit, requiring focused attention to that location. For each participant, the critical stimulus was presented either near to or far from the attended location . In support of our hypothesis, inattentional blindness effects were maximal near the attended location, but only at intermediate task accuracy. (shrink)

Many philosophers have assumed that our preferences regarding hedonic events exhibit a bias toward the future: we prefer positive experiences to be in our future and negative experiences to be in our past. Recent experimental work by Greene et al. (ms) confirmed this assumption. However, they noted a potential for some participants to respond in a deviant manner, and hence for their methodology to underestimate the percentage of people who are time neutral, and overestimate the percentage who are future biased. (...) We aimed to replicate their study using an alternative methodology that ensures there are no such deviant responses, and hence more accurately tracks future bias and time neutrality. Instead of finding more time neutrality than Greene et al., however, we found vastly more past bias. Our explanation for this surprising finding helps to reveal the rationale behind both future and past biased preferences, and undermines the generalisability of one of the most influential motivations for the rationality of hedonic future bias: Parfit’s My Past or Future Operations. (shrink)